FEA MEMBERSHIP INFORMATION TABLE VOLUNTEERS SIGH-UP

for the upcoming Tribal Art Shows!

(respond to info@friendsofethnicart.org and either Jo or Cecily will contact you)

Hours listed below…

TRIBAL and TEXTILE ARTS (Fort Mason, San Francsico):

February 10 – 12Friday (11-7), Saturday (11-7) and Sunday (11-5)

ART OF THE AMERICAS (Marin Center, San Rafael):

 February 25 — 26 Saturday (10-6) and Sunday (11-5)

                       …and, on Sunday, Friends Of Ethnic Art Presents an African Arts lecture:

                                                           A VISUAL MEMOIR

                                                              50 years in African Art
                                                              50 Months of Fieldwork or
                                                             50 Slides in 50 Minutes –

                                                         (p.s. It can’t be done….)

                                            by Professor Emeritus Herbert (Skip) Cole

                                     Fleet Room, Ft. Mason, Sunday, Feb 12, 10:00 am

Holiday Party  

will be hosted by

Jim Haas and Bonham’s and Butterfields

The party will be on December 4, 2011

     Ever wonder what dealers collect? What they keep?

After a lifelong career as a most highly respected
Indian dealer, historian/expert, and ancient art connoisseur, FEA member Ramona
Morris will take us on a half-hour slide-illustrated visual stroll through her
private collection of Keepers and Favorites.

Our Annual Friends of Ethnic Art Holiday Party will
host Ramona and her delightful, short presentation this year, adding additional
aesthetic appreciation and connoisseurship to our usual holiday festive fun and
camaraderie. As in years past, there will be hands-on inspections and
personally tailored previews of Bonham’s full Native American Art Auction (held
Dec. 5, the next day at noon). On view to us will be 386 objects — Hopi
kachinas, historic and Pre-Historic Southwest pottery, Navajo rugs and blankets
(including a classic Navajo chief’s blanket, est. $300,000) and silver jewelry,
Indian baskets, a fine selection of Eskimo and Northwest Coast artifacts, and
exciting Plains Indian material, including an extremely early Cheyenne quilled
war shirt (est. $300,000–$500,000). Specialists will answer your incisive
questions. And, of course, coupled with these feasts for our eyes will be FEA’s
cornucopia of wines, cheeses, eggnogs, and zesty party foods.

This presentation, preview, and party is free for
members of FEA. There will, however, be a registration table at the door to allow
late renewers and new joiners to pay their modest annual dues; when they do,
they will get into this event free.

This triple-layered event is Sunday, December 4,
5-8 PM, at Bonham’s & Butterfields Auction House, San Francisco. Remember: joining or renewing may be accomplished at the door
with your personal check.

Wine, and Catered Lunch Provided

The  Park-like Setting Offers Spacious Cool Interiors

and

Both Shady and Sunny Gardens,

Quick Mid-Peninsula  Highway 101 Access,

Easy Free Parking.

The Annual FEA Meeting, Party and Auction will take place in a beautiful South Bay park where lunch will be served and our fund-raising auction held. Dressing in Ethnic Clothing & Jewelry is Encouraged!!!

What a Party & Auction is coming this September 18!—lively and
exciting but in a secluded parkland setting that will be ‘ours’ for
the day, artful and aesthetically stimulating – and fun.

The catered food will be a spectacular array of the varied cuisines
of India, but our theme this year focuses more on the village life
of Tribal Asia. If you’d like to take advantage of this traditional
opportunity to wear your ethnic finery, from jewelry to colorful
indigenous textiles made into skirts or shirts, pants or dresses,
vests or scarves, then here is your chance. Consider examples of
the costumes, clothing, or jewelry of the hill tribes of S.E. Asia
and the Golden Triangle, or of The Philippines or Indonesia, or of
the ethnic minorities of China, India, and The Himalayas. But any
ethnic adornment is encouraged, and don’t forget a hat.

There will be a lot of tribal art to admire at the Annual Party &
Auction. On one side of the room will be a display of Animals
in Ethnic Art, loaned (and not for sale) by many members of
FEA. You are invited, urged, to bring one exciting example of an
animal motif in an art object or artifact from Africa, Oceania, The
Americas (including Pre-Columbian cultures), or Tribal Asia. It
can be a figure, a mask, a textile depiction, jewelry or an object of
adornment, weapon, or whatever you wish. You may bring three
objects if they are small, two if medium-sized, or one if large.
Please bring nothing huge and nothing alive. Bring a label or small
sign-card for each object, on which you have typed or printed:
What the object is and a recognizable description; Which people,
tribe, or culture made it; Where these people live(d); When you
believe it was made; and, Who has loaned it (you or Anonymous).
You will have to pack, transport, pick up, and insure your own
object(s) and hold FEA and its members blameless.

One the other side of the room will be displayed a bounty of more

than 100 donated art treasures: statues and masks, textiles and
costumes/clothing, baskets and bowls, jewelry, figures, weapons
and shields, art books, objects of use, stools and tools…

A favorite annual event for many FEA members is the Fundraising
Auction that concludes the Annual Party. Dedicated tribal art
collectors, enthusiastic art lovers and artists, and home designers
and decorators all seem to love the two aspects of this auction.

The first pleasure is donating a significant pre-loved ethnic art
object from your home, gallery, or storage. You help FEA in its
programs, events, publications, and good works; you help your
tax deductions; you clear display space in your home; you bring a
happy tear to the eye of your spouse, roommate, or cat; and, you
feel good about yourself and your encouragement of the ethnic art
community.

The second pleasure is attending the Auction, spotting some
treasure(s) that the generous and overwhelmed have donated and
the unknowing have overlooked, and bidding and buying it at a
bargain.

But, Donors: not every piece goes for a bargain price. You may
donate significant objects with the assurance that an eager throng
of 100+ knowledgeable art lovers will carefully preview and study
your donation. They’ll read and hear your object description and
your name (anonymity upon request) and they’ll appreciate your
generosity. They’ll bid spiritedly. (Pieces with marketable values
over $1000 may be donated contingent upon the piece bringing a
pre-agreed minimum, or else the donor can have the piece back.)
Your generosity will not be overlooked, so give like a chief to a
potlatch. Do you want to acquire a significant piece? Then bring a
significant piece. If we all bring an old significant piece, then we
can all go home with a new significant piece.

Please walk around your house, gallery, or storage and put aside
for donation to FEA those pieces that no longer excite you or your
spouse, or don’t display well with your recent acquisitions or your
home renovation. Operators are standing by for your donations
to FEA: volunteers will PICK UP your donations, or you can take
them to local drop spots (see accompanying page).

Although art donations may be brought to the Party, they are better
promoted when received as soon as possible or during these next
four weeks. Remember our motto: Clear Space in Your Home –
And Then Fill It.

The Auction will be live and lively for most of the objects, but
determined bidders and those having to leave early can leave
strong bids or take advantage of Buy Now prices for some pieces;
others will close during lunchtime in a Silent Auction.

Press Release: (LOS ANGELES, February, 2011) – The revealing title says it all: Exhibitionist, Art Dealer as Impresario.

This is a new biography by April Dammann, which chronicles the story of Earl Stendahl, who exposed Los Angeles to a wealth of art and artifacts, and whose Stendahl Galleries continues to thrive as the oldest continuously operating art gallery in the City of Angels.

In 1911 Stendahl, a young candy-maker from Wisconsin, had a vision unlike any other art
dealer in provincial Los Angeles: develop local talent into famous, sought-after painters and
bring the finest works of art from all over the world to Southern California. Henri Matisse, Pablo
Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, David Siqueiros, Marc Chagall, Edgar Payne, Guy Rose, William
Wendt and Lorser Feitelson were among hundreds of artists represented by Earl Stendahl,
who moved among them like the ringmaster of a magnificent circus.

Published as Stendahl Galleries celebrates its centennial, this dazzling illustrated biography
describes Stendahl’s move to Los Angeles in 1909 and his subsequent entry into the fine arts
community. With the zeal of a showman and an extraordinary eye, Stendahl went on to create
one of the most influential art galleries in the world. Exhibitionist includes a cast of characters
that could be taken from a 20th Century Who’s Who. High -profile clients such as William
Randolph Hearst, Edward G. Robinson, and Vincent Price make their appearances, as do
countless other public figures and the famed artists whose careers were nurtured by Stendahl.

The Stendahl story is at its heart a Los Angeles story, peopled with celebrities, rocked by
scandal, full of failure and triumph. The book is also personal. Stendahl was author April
Damman’s grandfather-in-law. She knew him—the “exhibitionist,” who prevailed against all
odds and inspired a family business that has lasted one hundred years.

While first specializing in the Western landscape and plein-air artists of the turn of the last
century, Stendahl later awakened Los Angeles collectors to the world of abstract modernist
painters. Stendahl Galleries was the only place on the West Coast ever to exhibit Picasso’s
monumental Guernica.

Stendahl also made his name as one of the premier dealers in Pre-Columbian art and artifacts,
a nascent discipline at the time.

As Dammann portrays him, Earl Stendahl is a modestly educated man who nevertheless had
impeccable taste in art and artists, and whose loyalty to them was always unstinting. Without
false modesty, Dammann observes, Stendahl preferred to call himself an “art peddler,” and to
those who called him a “pioneer,” Stendahl would amend the accolade to “buccaneer.”

If fine art can be termed “candy for the eye,” readers will learn that Stendahl, originally a
confectioner, continued to craft fine chocolates at the same time he represented some of the
world’s finest painters and sculptors.

Stendahl’s story is an emphatically visual one, and the book includes more than 200 never-
before-published photographs of the man, his family, his galleries, his painters and patrons,
and some of the many outstanding artworks he represented.

Finally, Exhibitionist emphasizes that Earl Stendahl’s legacy is alive today, not only in the
gallery that continues to bear his name, but in the many institutions – both in Los Angeles and
worldwide – whose collections boast Stendahl acquisitions and are thereby indebted to the
man’s keen eye and impeccable taste.

About the Author

April Anson Dammann has been a writer for radio, television, motion pictures and theatre,
and has recently been a producer for the Los Angeles stage. She holds degrees in French
Literature from UCLA, the University of Rochester, and La Sorbonne. She and her husband,
Ron Dammann, live in the same house where Earl Stendahl lived and which continues to
serve as the Stendhal Galleries.

2118 WILSHIRE BOULEVARD  SUITE 880  SANTA MONICA  CALIFORNIA 90403
PHONE 310.395.9982  FAX 310.395.3353  WWW.ANGELCITYPRESS.COM

OLMEC Rituals and Beliefs

” a survey of the range of jade artifacts, their functions and

 meanings with a focus on jade axes”

Koret Auditorium
de Young Museum
San Francisco

East Bay

On Sunday, November 6th, FEA hosted a member-only event at a Berkeley Hills home. It was scheduled from 3 PM to 5 PM with drinks and hors d’oeuvres to be served.

The owners began their collection of pre-Colombian ceramics in the 1950′s,  while working in Costa Rica, and it has grown slowly but steadily since.  The focus was increasingly on Veracruz/Remojadas ceramics particularly as they became available in the 1960s.  These figurative pieces blend nicely with the large scale sculpture creations of one of the owners giving their home the feel of an indoor-outdoor exhibition space.  The owners will conduct tours of the collection at 3:30 PM and 4 PM.