Art: Empty Galleries

Art is a commodity that often sells better second-hand than new. One landmark witness to this fact has been Manhattan’s American Art Association-Anderson Galleries. For years most U. S. art fanciers who were creating new collections, and sometimes their lawyers and agents who were dispersing old collections, have been seen in the Galleries’ staid brick building on Madison Avenue at the southeast corner of Manhattan’s esthetic 57th Street.

Last week its high, dark rooms were empty, stripped of their fittings. The American Art Association-Anderson Galleries, its license suspended for nonpayment of over $50,000 in debts, had banged down the gavel for perhaps the last time.

A young auctioneer named Thomas E. Kirby and partners founded the American Art Association in 1883, were soon holding sales that ran into the millions. Auctioneer Kirby sold such famous Victorian paintings as Rosa Bonheur’s The Horse Fair, which Commodore Vanderbilt bought and gave to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1922, with borrowed money, Kirby put up the Madison Avenue building. Next year he sold the American Art Association to rich, eccentric Cortlandt Field Bishop for $500,000 and retired, having auctioned $60,000,000 worth of art in 40 years. Founder Kirby died a year later.

The new owner immediately sailed for Europe, leaving the business in charge of its old employes. One day in London he ran into Mitchell Kennerley. Kennerley (who had been a publisher) was owner of another big Manhattan auction house—the Anderson Galleries. Bishop asked him whether he would like to sell the Anderson Galleries. Mr. Kennerley agreed (for $500,000) and the two firms were merged in October 1929.

That same month the stockmarket crashed and the art business went to hell. But Cortlandt Bishop was rich enough to stand the strain. When he died in 1935 sales were picking up, and he left his own galleries the job of auctioning off his collection of art objects, books and engravings. Executors of the Bishop estate included his widow, Amy Bend Bishop, and his old friend and employe, Edith Nixon. Widow and friend were both dissatisfied with sales of the Bishop art. They looked about for a book expert to help courtly President Hiram Haney Parke (art specialist who had been with the company 25 years, had run it for Owner Bishop since 1923) sell the books. The man they found was Mitchell Kennerley again. Hiram Parke resigned. So did Vice President Otto Bernet. With them departed most of the American Art Association’s experts, auctioneers, appraisers, to found the new Parke-Bernet Galleries around the corner, leaving Mitchell Kennerley as president with what remained of his old Anderson Galleries staff. Mr. Kennerley did a good job of selling the Bishop books. But last year Widow Bishop and Friend Nixon, summering together in Paris, up and sold the Galleries for a mere $175,000 to Milton B. Logan, onetime real-estate agent, and Insurance Broker John T. Geery.

So many sudden changes of management and control were apparently too much for the old auction house. Last fortnight creditors who had consigned its goods for sale demanded their money. Last week New York City’s Commissioner of Licenses Paul Moss suspended its license. Meanwhile, the Parke-Bernet Galleries stepped in, leased the building on Madison Avenue from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., its owner, prepared to carry on the old building under their new name.