AFA 18th Anniversary

18th Anniversary 154 www.afamag.com | w ww.incollect.com Becoming America Highlights from the Jonathan and Karin Fielding Collection by Chad Alligood onathan and Karin Fielding began collecting art and antiques of early America more than twenty-five years ago for their historic home in Maine. Today, the collection comprises several hundred objects, dating from the late seventeenth century to the late nineteenth century. In the Fielding collection, widely regarded as one of the most significant of its kind in the United States, outstanding and rare furniture sits alongside fine needlework, painted portraits, quilts, painted boxes, and other decorative art. Objects lovingly made for daily life by rural New Englanders also feature prominently in the collection: ceramics, handwoven rugs, metal implements, lighting devices, fire buckets, scrimshaw, and weathervanes all variously evince the challenging beauty and surprising ingenuity endemic to early American life. Over two hundred of these objects are currently on view at the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, in the newly-built Jonathan and Karin Fielding Wing, an 8,600 square- foot addition to the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art. The new wing, designed by Frederick Fisher and Partners, includes 5,000 square feet of gallery space with dramatic, colorful displays that showcase early American paintings, furniture, and works of decorative art. The Fieldings have generously given a number of these objects to the Huntington’s art collections. The ongoing collection exhibition Becoming America: Highlights from the Jonathan and Karin Fielding Collection explores early American history through the lens of these objects, a number of which are illustrated here. Periodic rotations and focused displays will continue to animate the Fielding Wing, which will remain devoted to interpreting this remarkable collection of material.