The Winter Antiques Show is an annual art, antiques, and design fair organized by East Side House Settlement in New York City. All net proceeds from the fair benefit East Side House Settlement, which provides education, technology training, and college opportunities to residents in the South Bronx and surrounding communities.
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The Winter Antiques Show is a ten-day event held each year at the Park Avenue Armory. In 2016, the fair featured seventy-three exhibitors from North America and Europe. The New York Times describes the show as a “galaxy of colliding worlds,” with works ranging from Egyptian antiquities to postwar Italian art glass.
All works are vetted by a committee of 160 experts for authenticity, date, and condition.
History
The show was established when two young antiques dealers, John Bihler and Henry Coger, suggested the creation of an antiques show as a fundraiser for East Side House Settlement. The fair opened on Monday, January 24, 1955, with one hundred dealers from the East Coast, and by the end of the decade, it was seen as the leading event of its kind in the United States.
In 1970, the first Winter Antiques Show catalogue was produced, and the fair hosted a loan show of 19th-century American paintings and objects from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, reflecting a focus on American art at the fair.
The fair’s annual loan exhibitions promote the collections of American museums and have included loan shows from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New-York Historical Society, and Peabody Essex Museum.
In 1993, the vetting process that is still in use today was introduced.
In 1995, Arie L. Kopelman was named co-chair of the Winter Antiques Show.
In 2015, Lucinda C. Ballard and Michael R. Lynch joined Kopelman as co-chairs of the Winter Antiques Show.