Preservation Fair 2009
Please join Charles Biddle of Concept Art Gallery at Preservation Fair 2009: Saving Your Family Treasures, at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History on Saturday, 28 February 2009.
Sponsored by the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and the University of Pittsburgh, the Preservation Fair is an opportunity for you to learn ways of caring for your family treasures through demonstrations, lectures and displays of conservation work in progress and examples of completed conservation efforts. Approximately 30 exhibitors will take part in this event including conservators specializing in books, documents, paintings and works of art on paper, photographs and films. The Fair will also feature a large collection of free handouts dealing with many aspects of restoration, preservation and conservation.
Visitors are encouraged to bring a (small) family treasure – specifically books, papers, photos, works of art on paper, and films -- with them to discuss with the exhibitors. Visitors will learn simple things they can do to extend the life of their treasures – such as providing the appropriate storage conditions, archival framing, and what to do in the case of water damage.
Our gallery plans to show various techniques and framing strategies for archival framing, and a few works that have been damaged by non-archival framing. The Fair opens to the public at 10am and will run through 4pm. It is free with Museum admission.
New Exhibition and Website!
We are kicking off February with a new website and a new exhibition! As you may have noticed, our website was due for a little “update to 2009,” so our web designers have been busily polishing up the site and adding some cool new features such as this blog, a quick email sign up, and a searchable artists directory! We’re excited to be able to feature the artists we represent as well as the many Contemporary Graphics we’ve collected in one searchable location. To compliment this new feature in real-time, we’ve put together an encyclopedic collection of artwork drawn from our private storage and hung salon-style in the upstairs gallery. We’re featuring artwork by over fifty artists in the show, so be sure to stop by and check it out…or if you can’t make it to Pittsburgh, check it out here online! “Parallel Salon” runs through March 21st, 2009.
Concept Art Gallery…the 70s...from the desk of Sam
Concept Art Gallery began operations in the spring of 1972 as a vastly different gallery than we have become in 2009. The Gallery was founded by my parents, Mel and Carolyn Berkovitz, in Squirrel Hill on the 5800 block Forbes Avenue. The space was the former Delphnios Italian Restaurant. The only remaining business from that era and on that side of the street is the Baskin and Robbins and Oliver Flower Shop. The Galleries’ early exhibition program consisted of Henry Koerner, Gary Bukovnik, Daniel Goldstein, and Gordon Mortensen, Studio art glass was another early interest. We collaborated on numerous exhibitions with Fred Hampson and Habatat Gallery in Detroit. We were the very first gallery in the region to exhibit and sell Dale Chihuly’s work. The Henry Koerner Exhibitions were especially exciting. Our first exhibition featured numerous Koerner painitngs from the 1940’s and 1950’s which we would love to resale given the chance. This exhibition really showed us the potential of showing and selling fine art. That Koerner exhibition quickly led to a sale to The Carnegie Museum of Art and later to Mr. Koerner’s 1983 Exhibition at the Carnegie Museum of Art “From Vienna to Pittsburgh, The Art of Henry Koerner”.
Pittsburgh: A Century of Photography Review
Kurt Shaw reviews Pittsburgh: A Century of Photography in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Read the article here.
Modern and Contemporary Art and Design Auction Review
John Altdorfer reviews our Modern and Contemporary Art and Design Auction in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Read the article here.