Eli Wilner
Eli Wilner (born 1956) is proprietor of Eli Wilner & Company, a New York art gallery specializing in American and European period frames from the 19th through the early 20th century. He is a leading frame dealer, collector, and restorer, as well as an acknowledged and published authority on period frames. Wilner is a graduate of Brandeis University, where he received a BA in Fine Arts in 1976, and of Hunter College, where he received his MA in 1978. He was a Bryant Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1995 to 1999. He has been an Art Forum member since 1993 and a member of the Director’s Circle of the Smithsonian American Art Museum since 1997. In 1998, Wilner served on the Board of Trustees for the New York Academy of Art.
Eli Wilner & Company
In 1983, Eli Wilner founded Eli Wilner & Company, an art gallery located on New York’s Upper East Side dedicated to the display and sale of American and European frames! The gallery has been primarily responsible for the increased awareness and appreciation of American and European period frames. Committed to the education of curators, collectors, and dealers, Eli Wilner & Company has curated many important frame exhibitions and lectured extensively about the antique frame for museums and groups throughout the United States.
Eli Wilner & Company is now the world’s largest resource for antique frames, with over 3,000 frames in its collection. The company creates marriages of painting and frame consistent with style, artistic composition, and historical period. The company also operates a professional studio, employing skilled craftspeople providing full frame restoration services as well as precise frame replication.
The company has worked extensively with the White House, reframing over two-dozen American paintings from the collection. In addition, Eli Wilner & Company has worked with some of the nation’s most prominent museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum as well as leading auction houses Sotheby's and Christie's.
In 2015, Eli Wilner & Company announced two initiatives that are unique in their field. One is the first-ever fully funded frame conservation grants for American museums. Wilner assembled a group of distinguished jurors to select the award recipients in early 2016.[1] The second is a program to provide frames to consignors of artworks to auction houses and galleries with no upfront costs. In this program, the owner of the artwork is required to agree to purchase the frame, with the payment due only after the successful sale of the artwork. If the artwork fails to find a buyer, the frame is returned to Wilner, and no charges apply. This structure is unique in the ultra-high-end framing industry, as it protects the consignor from the financial risk of framing in advance of offering an artwork for sale.[2]
Selected exhibitions
2004 The Art of the Frame: Gems From the Simoni Collection, PENSACOLA MUSEUM OF ART, Pensacola, FL: An exhibition of exemplary frames drawn from the collection of Justine Simoni, an unparalleled group of American frames from the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Sponsor of the 1998 exhibition in the Henry Luce Study Center, American Wing, THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, New York, NY: An extraordinary installation of American picture frames. The installation included examples of American frames from the early 19th Century through the early 20th Century.
Books
The Gilded Edge Revised Edition: The Art of the Frame (2011)
The Gilded Edge: The Art of the Frame (2000)
Antique American Frames: Identification and Price Guide 2nd Edition (1999) (with Mervyn Kaufman)
Antique American Frames: Identification and Price Guide (1995) (with Mervyn Kaufman)
The Art of the Frame: American Frames of the Arts and Crafts Period (1988)
Selected publications
Eli Wilner & Company has published over 100 articles on the period frame.
Smeaton, Suzanne, “American Frames of the Arts and Crafts Period 1870-1920,” The Magazine Antiques, November 1989, pp. 1124–1137.
Smeaton, Suzanne, “Frames in Context,” Antiques and Fine Art, January/February 1991, Vol. VIII, No 2, pp110–117.
Smeaton, Suzanne ... “Within Gilded Borders: The Frames of Stanford White,” American Art, National Museum of American Art: Smithsonian Institution, Spring 1993.
Articles about Eli Wilner and the gallery have appeared in the New York Times, Forbes magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Art & Antiques Magazine, and many other notable publications. Eli has been featured in three different segments of Martha Stewart Living.
External links
- Eli Wilner & Company’s website
- Fast Frame Forward: Watch the craftsmen at Eli Wilner & Company create a magnificent frame on YouTube
- Ask Martha: Frames, from the Martha Stewart Living website