Calendar

November 10–12, 2023

Celebrating 60 Years

One of the most acclaimed antiques shows highlighting the best of Americana for 60 years! Don’t miss the finest offerings from more than 60 distinguished dealers at this spectacular showcase of art, antiques, and design.

Enjoy complimentary general admission at Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library when you present your Delaware Antiques Show ticket during the three days of the show.

Register now.

 

Lectures

Friday Lecture | November 10, 2:00 pm

Americana Insights: Fresh Perspectives and New Discoveries

By Lisa Minardi with David Schorsch

As we navigate an increasingly fast-paced and digital world, the debut of Americana Insights at the Delaware Antiques Show serves as a poignant reminder of the beauty of the tangible and the enduring allure of folk art and Americana. It is a testament to the timelessness of American craftsmanship.

Join Americana Insights editor Lisa Minardi, a distinguished curator and scholar of Pennsylvania German art and culture, to explore highlights from this inaugural annual publication. Gain an appreciation for the delicate artistry of cutworks made by an inmate in Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary, delve into the meaning of painted tavern signs and jewelry in folk portraiture, discover the genius of New Jersey schoolmaster and calligrapher Thomas Earl, and witness the beauty and significance of signature quilts from the nineteenth century. Guests will also get a sneak peek at topics lined up for 2024, as Americana Insights continues to seek new, original research on aspects of traditional American folk art and Americana created from the colonial era to the early twentieth century.

The significance of each object, the artists who crafted them, and the cultural contexts that breathed life into these creations unfold in scholarly essays and lavish imagery in Americana Insights. It is a treasure trove of inspiration for architects, designers, collectors, and anyone passionate about the arts.

Editor of Americana Insights, Lisa Minardi is a distinguished curator and scholar of Pennsylvania German art and culture. She has organized numerous exhibitions and published extensively. Assistant curator at Winterthur Museum from 2006 to 2016, Minardi serves as executive director of Historic Trappe and the Center for Pennsylvania German Studies.

Lisa is currently a PhD candidate in the History of American Civilization Program at the University of Delaware, where she is researching the German-speaking community of early Philadelphia for her dissertation. She holds an MA from the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture and a BA in history and museum studies from Ursinus College.

David Schorsch, a leading authority on American antiques and folk art and American Insights co-founder will join Lisa for Q&A.

Book signing to follow lecture.

Keynote Lecture | Saturday, November 11, 10:00 am

Photo by Lia Clay Miller.

The New Antiquarians and the Future of Connoisseurship 

by Michael Diaz-Griffith

The antiques world is bursting open thanks to a new generation of collectors who are beginning to revitalize the field. Michael Diaz-Griffith, author of The New Antiquarians: At Home with Young Collectors (Phaidon/The Monacelli Press, 2023), discusses this reawakened interest in antiques, considering unorthodox new approaches to looking at—and living with—the material culture of the past. Spanning the spectrum from minimalist to maximalist, the young collectors he chronicles embrace irreverent modes of collecting and decorating with vintage and historic objects that echo the way we consume visual material today: brazenly blending the old with the new, embracing anachronism and pastiche, deploying serious knowledge with wit and humor, and considering old things through the lens of contemporary values.

Michael Diaz-Griffith is an art historian, designer, and executive director of the Design Leadership Network. Prior to joining the DLN, Diaz-Griffith served as executive director of Sir John Soane’s Museum Foundation and as associate executive director of The Winter Show, America’s most prestigious and longest-running art and antiques fair. The New Antiquarians: At Home with Young Collectors is his first book.

Book signing to follow lecture.

Young Scholars Lectures | Saturday, November 11, 3:00 pm

Left: Becca Lo Presti; Right: Taylor Rossini

The Last Tall Clock in America? A Winterthur Tall Clock and Time Telling in Nineteenth-Century America 

by Becca Lo Presti, Lois F. McNeil Fellow, Winterthur 

Through an analysis of a mid-Atlantic tall clock at Winterthur, this talk explores the nuances of time telling in nineteenth century America. Although the production of tall clocks decreased as the century progressed, these objects remained present in both material and imagined spaces of American life. This enduring presence of the tall clock subsequently reveals how the right to regulate one’s time varied drastically depending on race, class, and gender despite increasing access to time-telling pieces.  

Empire on a Plate: Imperial Rivalry and Cartographic Knowledge in Overton’s Trading Part of the West Indies (1741) 

by Taylor Rossini, Lois F. McNeil Fellow, Winterthur  

Rossini explores the role of cartographic representation in the staging of eighteenth-century empire through a British map created during the War of Jenkins Ear (1739–48). The map, published in an unstable wartime moment, offers an optimistic and somewhat counterfactual view of British naval power in the Americas, providing a compelling opportunity to reflect on how material props are entangled with imperial aspirations.  

Sunday Lecture | November 12, 2:00 pm