Eli Wilner is the founder and CEO of Eli Wilner & Company, a New York City gallery that specializes in European and American frames from the 15th century through the present. He is a leading frame dealer, restorer and collector, as well as an acknowledged and published authority on the art of framing. His publications include Antique American Frames: Identification and Price Guide written with Mer
vyn Kaufman and published by Avon, and The Gilded Edge published by Chronicle Books, the authoritative book about antique American frames [published in 2000 with a second edition released in 2011]. Eli Wilner has framed over 10,000 paintings, including a large Jacobo Bassano painting for The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and 28 paintings for the White House. Eli Wilner & Company is proud to have just completed the framing of Emmanuel Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware for The Metropolitan Museum of Art. For over two decades, Eli Wilner has loaned several hundred frames for the Old Master and 19th Century European painting sales at Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Bonhams and Doyle. Since 1983, Eli Wilner & Company has published over 100 articles about the antique frame, and collaborated with curators from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Parrish Art Museum, National Academy Museum, the Columbus Museum of Art, and many more, in their exhibitions of frames. In May 2011, Eli Wilner gave a presentation at the International Foundation for Art Research's evening event What Frames Can Tell Us held at Christie's New York. The event also included lectures by George Bisacca (Conservator, Paintings Conservation Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art), Laurence B. Kanter (Lional Goldfrank III Curator of Early European Art at the Yale University Art Gallery). Wilner's presentation 'Frame Forensics' included a discussion of frame aesthetics, connoisseurship, and identification and highlighted a number of tips about how to recognize an authentic period frame, how to identify French, Italian, English, and American frame construction, and how to tell if a frame has been altered or restored. Eli Wilner has been doing frame evaluations and appraisals since 1990. Currently, Eli Wilner & Company is evaluating a group of over 200 frames that were donated to a major museum by a prominent New York gallery. Eli Wilner & Company Gallery Director Suzanne Smeaton will be the first certified USPAP-compliant member of the Appraisers Association of America in the area of antique frames. Eli Wilner and Ms. Smeaton have worked with the Appraisers Association of America to create the exam that must be passed by all future appraisers wishing to certify in the area of antique frames.
