Signed Leo Fairbanks .
This item is for sale and will be sold to the highest bidder.
There are no original art pieces for sale on the internet as far as i can find out.
Dear Robert:
This is a response from Mr. Jonathan Leo Fairbanks Himself:
Yes, that is a drawing that I made at the PA. Academy of the Fine Arts during or about 1955/6 while I was studying mural painting under George Harding. I cannot recall when or how the drawing passed out of my hands on to someone else-- except that I may have made a gift of it to another artist -- or else it was sold in one of the many exhibitions of my works in a gallery several years ago. The photo of me in the Globe article shows a very different -looking person than I am today. My current bio and photo is to be found at artfact.com , where I am employed as Vice President for Research. I served almost 30 years as Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston- now I am an Emeritus Curator of the MFA. I'm listed in Whose Who in American Art, Whose Who in America, Wikipidia, as well as several other sources. I am an active and productive artist. I was in Salt Lake City last week where I completed three good-sized oil landscapes in and of the Rocky Mountains. The figure drawing served as a study for part of a mural exercise in tempera measuring 4'x 8' that I made at the Academy. I will not be a bidder for the drawing, but I wish you the best of luck in its sale. Please let me know what it brings.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Leo Fairbanks
Jonathan Leo Fairbanks (b. 1933- Ann Arbor, Michigan)
Son of a sculptor, the late Avard T. Fairbanks (1898-1989), Jonathan spent much of his youth in studio work together with his ten siblings. A profound appreciation for all crafts was formed early. He earned a B.F.A. degree from the University of Utah in 1953. After service in the U.S. Navy, he attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia and earned an M.F.A. degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Subsequently he received a Winterthur Fellowship and earned an M.A. degree in American Culture from the University of Delaware in 1961. Employed at the Henry Francis duPont Winterthur Museum, he was advanced to Associate Curator in Charge of Conservation over the ten years that followed. During that time he was responsible for overseeing a building that became known as a world-class conservation facility-- staffing, equipping it, and planning its conservation-training program.
In 1971 he received an appointment to join the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston to start a new department of American Decorative arts and Sculpture – for which he became its first Curator. He vigorously advocated collections development to include works by contemporary studio arts in crafts media. After mounting several seminal exhibitions (Frontier America, Paul Revere’s Boston, New England Begins: The Seventeenth Century, The Art that is Life: The Arts and Crafts Movement in America, and a series of Contemporary Crafts exhibitions) he received the 4th endowed curatorship in the 125-year history of the Museum. That appointment is recognized since his 1999 retirement as The Katharine Lane Weems Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture, Emeritus.
An enduring legacy of his work at the MFA remains the initiation and development of the “Please Be Seated” program that many museums have copied. At the MFA this accounts for the collecting of works by more than fifty American furniture masters. This program began in 1976 with the acquisition of a dozen pieces of furniture made by Sam Maloof. This program continues to expand with new accessions. By inviting visitors to experience seating themselves in superbly crafted works of art, the MFA confirms that art in craft media is alive and well in America today.
Although no longer employed by a particular museum, Jonathan Fairbanks continues museum consulting and guest exhibition work. Notable recent exhibitions include a traveling exhibition for the Diplomatic Reception Rooms of the U.S. Department of State, an exhibition of his own paintings for the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, Hagerstown, MD., as well as participation in the current exhibition: “Crafts in America”. His own work as a painter continues as he writes a weekly newsletter for Artfact.com. Readers are invited to register to receive (for free) his weekly newsletters that survey upcoming auctions-- showing fully illustrated catalogue entries from auction houses world wide on Artfact.com.
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