Contact: Callie Siskel
Telephone: (212) 247-6980
Email: siskel@newcriterion.com
OCTOBER 27, 2008—On Thursday, October 22, 2008, at The New Criterion’s second Benefit Art Auction and Gala Dinner at The Union League Club of New York, the editors bestowed the first New Criterion Award in recognition of distinguished contributions to culture and the arts. Roger Kimball, co-editor and publisher of The New Criterion, presented the award in front of 160 guests, including Hilton Kramer, the founding editor of The New Criterion, auction chairmen Marco and Cristina Grassi, contributing artists, and friends. Mr. Kimball said in his remarks that “the life of high culture is a many-sided affair that requires not only artists and dealers but also patrons with commitment to supporting art and the appurtenances of culture.”
The awards, designed by the artist Sally Pettus, were presented to the contemporary realist painter William Bailey, Professor of Art Emeritus at Yale University, the late André Emmerich, who died last year at the age of 82, and whose gallery was instrumental in bringing important Color Field painters like Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, and Kenneth Noland to the public's attention, and Frank Martucci for underwriting one of the most important and accomplished catalogue raisonnés to be published in over a decade: George Inness: A Catalogue Raisonné, edited by the art scholar Michael Quick.
The auction, organized by James Panero, Managing Editor of The New Criterion and Callie Siskel, Assistant to the Publishers, and officiated by James G. Niven of Sotheby’s, sold over thirty works of art, with proceeds going to support The New Criterion, a not for profit magazine. The highest-selling works included a still-life by William Bailey, an oil on canvas by Judith Pond Kudlow, wife of Larry Kudlow of CNBC's Kudlow & Company, a watercolor by Graham Nickson, dean of The New York Studio School, and a drawing by Philip Pearlstein, whose work is part of the collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY. All guests received a full color catalogue, including images, estimates and information on the thirty-seven works for sale.
More about The New Criterion Benefit Art Auction, including images: www.newcriterion.com/auction
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