NEW YORK, NY.- Asia Week New York, in partnership with The Winter Show, will present Partners in Life and Art: The Spectacular Collections of the Havemeyer Family featuring noted authorities Alice Frelinghuysen and Thomas Denenberg. The presentation, moderated by Dessa Goddard, chairman of Asia Week New York, will be held on Saturday, January 28 at 5:00 p.m. in the historic Colonel's Room at the Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Avenue, New York.

“The Havemeyers were a unique partnership among Gilded Age collectors with shared but separate tastes who ultimately built major museum collections in the United States,” says Dessa Goddard. “We will explore their separate evolution as collectors which led to their joint passions as collectors and patrons of Impressionist paintings through Mary Cassatt, and pioneering Louis C. Tiffany and his studio. We will discuss the couple’s interest in both mainstream art and their individual fascination with Chinese and Japanese ceramics, paintings, screens, and prints, and delve into the nature of the relationship between Louisine and her daughter Electra and their approaches toward collecting and the collections that they built, which resulted in richly diverse and seminal collections at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Shelburne Museum in Vermont.”

The Panel:

Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen is the Anthony W. and Lulu C. Wang Curator of American Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she started as an Andrew Mellon Fellow before joining the curatorial staff. While at The Met, she has curated, published, and lectured widely on a variety of subjects relating to American ceramics, glass, stained glass, late nineteenth-century furniture, and the Gilded Age. Her numerous exhibitions, articles, and publications have centered on the many aspects of the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany, including Louis Comfort Tiffany and Laurelton Hall— An Artist’s Country Estate (2006). She has also published on the collectors Louisine and H. O. Havemeyer, notably co-curating with Gary Tinterow in 1993 the landmark exhibition, Splendid Legacy: The Havemeyer Collection. In 2014, she was awarded the Frederic E. Church Award for contributions to American Culture and in 2016 she was the Clarice Smith Distinguished Scholar Lecture for the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. Frelinghuysen recently authored The Stained Glass Windows of St. Andrew’s Dune Church, and co-authored Gifts from the Fire: American Ceramics, 1880-1950.

Thomas Denenberg is the John Wilmerding Director of Shelburne Museum. Prior to moving to Vermont in 2011, he served as the Chief Curator and Deputy Director of the Portland Museum of Art, the Richard Koopman Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Wadsworth Atheneum, and Betsy Main Babcock Curator of American Art at Reynolda House. Tom received a B.A. in history from Bates College and earned his Ph.D. in American Studies from Boston University. He has held fellowships at the Smithsonian and Winterthur and taught at Boston University, Harvard University, and Wake Forest University. A frequent lecturer, Denenberg has written extensively on the retrospective culture of New England, including thematic catalogues exploring the work of Winslow Homer, Grandma Moses, and Andrew Wyeth.
                                                                                    
Dessa Goddard oversees all company specialists and consultants in the fields of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Himalayan, Indian and Southeast Asian Art in North America, and is the Senior North American Chinese Specialist in charge of acquiring consignments for the company's auctions in New York, Los Angeles, and Hong Kong. In over 30 years of Dessa's leadership, the US Asian group has achieved record-breaking sales in Chinese, Japanese and Korean Art. Together with Colin Sheaf and London senior management, she played a key role in opening Bonhams expansion into Hong Kong and Asia in 2007. She currently serves as chairman of Asia Week New York. One of North America's leading experts in her field, Dessa speaks Mandarin Chinese and Japanese. She travels and lectures throughout the U.S. on topics in Chinese art and has focused her recent research on the growth of philanthropy and urban culture, with a specific eye to the history of Asian art collecting in America. She regularly appears on PBS's Antiques Roadshow.