Crafting the Dream
IAC’s 29th Annual American Art Conference
May 8 – 9, 2025
Heritage Auctions
The Transformative Power of the Frame in American Art
PANEL DISCUSSION: Tracy Gill (co-founder, Gill & Lagodich Fine Period Frames, New York City [est. 1991], frame historian, lecturer, and consultant to museums and private collections); Stephanie Temma Hier (Canadian artist, based in New York, whose work merges oil painting and ceramic sculpture through the use of unconventional, often elaborate framing); Jennifer Thompson (The Gloria and Jack Drosdick Curator of European Painting and Sculpture and Curator of the John G. Johnson Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art); moderator: Suzanne Smeaton (pioneer in the study and scholarship of America period frames, advisor to public and private clients, curator and co-curator of frame exhibitions at major museums, and member, Board of Directors, Appraiser’s Association of America)
Crafting Modernism: The Prendergast Dreamwold Frame
Tracy Gill, PowerPoint lecture: “At the turn of the twentieth century, Charles and Maurice Prendergast launched a radical transformation in the design and craft of the American frame. Repurposing the techniques of traditional early European frame construction and gilding—also noting the craftsmanship and motifs inherent in American Folk Art—they created a new visual vocabulary: a modern reordering of historical forms into a new vernacular of American frames. Spearheaded by Charles Prendergast, the movement in American “picture frame reform” took hold in Boston, inspiring collaboration between artists hand-crafting frames for themselves and other artists. “Individualized” frames were conceived and created at the same time as a canvas to ensure harmony between painting and frame, with particular attention to tonalities of gilding and hand-carved profiles that would not overshadow a picture. As Prendergast’s first significant commission, the featured “Dreamwold” trophy frame (1903) represents an inflection point between the Gilded Age to the modern in American frame making.”
Tracy Gill, co-founder of Gill & Lagodich Fine Period Frames, New York City (established in 1991) which provides custom framing services and curatorial expertise to museums and private collectors. For over 35 years she has collected, studied, restored, sold, and curated period frames for exhibitions. A frame historian, she has also been the curator—and author of accompanying catalogues—for period frame exhibitions including “One Hundred Years on the Edge: The Frame in America 1820 to 1920” (1996), “Frames of Reference: From Object to Subject” (2000), “The American Frame: From Origin to Originality” (2003), and “Beaux Arts & Crafts: Masterpieces of American Frame Design 1890 –1920” (2011). Among her other publications is “American Period Frame Connoisseurship in the Twenty-First Century” in American Art: Collecting and Connoisseurship (2020).