The 2010 Charleston Art & Antiques Forum

celebrates its thirteenth year of presenting the best in fine and decorative arts scholarship during Charleston, South Carolina’s 2010 Antiques Week. Join us March 17 - 21, 2010 for E Pluribus Unum: Thirteen Colonies, One New Nation as we examine styles and traditions in Colonial America.

Founded in 1997, The Charleston Art & Antiques Forum opens Antiques Week with noted national and international arts experts addressing topics relating to connoisseurship and the interpretation of American material culture. The Forum offers superb lectures in small-scale sessions, with lively question and answer sessions that often continue over lunch or dinner. Speakers and participants enjoy a special camaraderie as they study significant collections together, visit historic properties and experience the best in Southern hospitality at receptions in landmark venues.

Wendell Garrett, the antiques world’s favorite scholar and statesman, states: “The Charleston Art & Antiques Forum stages the best fine and decorative arts program in the country today.”

The Charleston Art & Antiques Forum

is an opportunity for collectors, scholars and all who want to learn to:

gain appreciation and in-depth knowledge of paintings and objects which can illuminate our past
exchange information in formal and informal settings
explore new research in the field
engage old friends and make new ones in a collegial setting
participate in the array of offerings presented throughout Charleston during Antiques Week

The Charleston Art & Antiques Forum

is a non-profit (501-c-3) organization dedicated to presenting the best fine and decorative arts scholarship, while benefiting arts education and preservation initiatives.

The Forum Board and Board of Advisors volunteer their time, talent and expertise and we now have an Executive Director overseeing operations.

The Forum’s daytime lectures are held in the Old Courtroom at 23 Chalmers Street, in the heart of Charleston’s historic district. The program in 2010 includes a “grand tour” of the family collections at Middleton Place, the home of patriots Henry and Arthur Middleton.

During the spring, the Forum also is pleased to be co-sponsoring Lure of the Lowcountry, an exhibition at the Gibbes Museum of Art. The contemporary photographs of John Folsom are being paired with early landscape painting from the Gibbes collection, including works by Thomas Coram and Charles Fraser.

The 2009 Forum

attracted participants from 22 states, including students from Sotheby’s Institute, New York, museum docents from Bayou Bend in Houston, Texas and the Antiquarians of Charlottesville, Virginia. Wendy Moonan, antiques writer for The New York Times, described The Charleston Art & Antiques Forum as “reliably intellectual and utterly provocative, probably due to its intriguing mix of speakers.”