Tony Fusco and Robert Four, co-producers of AD20/21: Art & Design of the 20th & 21st Centuries are pleased announce a wide range of unique offerings and an exciting lineup of special guest programs for their fifth annual show March 15-18, 2012 at The Cyclorama at the Boston Center for the Arts, 539 Tremont Street in Boston's South End.  Featuring more than 40 exhibitors from the United States and Europe, AD20/21 combines a spectacular selection of 20th and 21st Century fine art, photography, vintage and contemporary studio furniture, jewelry and decorative arts with The 13th Annual Boston Print Fair, which offers fine prints, drawings and works on paper.  The producers are also pleased to announce that internationally-recognized interior designer Vicente Wolf will be the show's special guest and Lifetime Achievement Award recipient for 2012.

The show opens Thursday, March 15, with a Gala Preview from 5:30-8:30pm, with all proceeds benefiting Boston Architectural College (BAC), the largest independent, accredited college of spatial design.  The Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented to Vicente Wolf at 6:00pm at the Gala.  The BAC is anticipating more than 700 guests for the event, and has secured more than 50 corporate sponsors, primarily from the architecture and design industries.  Tickets are $250 and $100 and are available online at www.the-bac.edu.

The weekend show and sale continues Friday, March 16 from 1-8pm, Saturday, March 17 from 11am-8pm, and Sunday March 18 from 11am-5pm.  Weekend admission is $15, under 12 free and includes admission to all special programs, lectures and panel discussions at the fair.  Valet and discount parking is available, and the show café is catered by Jules Catering. For information and to preview the entire catalog for the show, visit www.AD2021.com.

"We are particularly thrilled with the unique offerings our exhibitors are bringing to the show," comments Tony Fusco.  "Many galleries have saved their best to be premiered with us, and there will be one show-stopping booth after another."

Martha Richardson Fine Art of Boston will present a one-man retrospective of works by African American Boston artist John Wilson (b. 1922), many of them offered to the public for the first time.  Among Wilson's many notable paintings, sculpture, prints and drawings at the show will be compelling 1947 oil on masonite "Black Despair (Black Solider)", which shows an African American solider, his head down on a table and his arms gripped over his head.  Stopping visitors in their tracks will be a 40" x 37" x 30" bronze of Eternal Presence, Wilson's seven-foot tall bronze sculpture that stands outside of the National Center for Afro-American Artists in Roxbury, where Wilson was born.  Only two of this smaller version have been cast, with one in the permanent collection of the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts.

Richardson and fellow exhibitor Jim Stroud of Center Street Studio will present talks on John Wilson on Saturday in their booths at the show.  Center Street Studio, a print publisher in Boston, issued several works by Wilson from 2001 to 2004. Center Street Studio will exhibit as part of The 13th Annual Boston Print Fair, which joined the AD20/21 show four years ago.  Other print fair exhibitors include Marc Chabot Fine Arts of Connecticut, who will feature a very rare 1922 etching and aquatint, "The Gates of the City" by John Taylor Arms, of which only 25 were printed in color.

Both vintage and contemporary furniture will be in the spotlight.  Mid-century exhibitors include Boston's Machine Age, now celebrating its 20th anniversary, featuring works by Hans Wegner, Paul Evans, and other notable designers.  Joining the show this year is BG Galleries, with showrooms in Hingham, Massachusetts and at 1stDibs@NYDC, featuring lighting and furnishings from the 1930s to the 1970s, including works by Gio Ponti.   Three contemporary furniture designers will also attract attention at the show: Sebastian Carpenter of Wenham, Massachusetts; Gregg Lipton of Cumberland, Maine; and Ray Bachand of 60Nobscot Home, located in Sudbury, Massachusetts.

"Our goal from the start has been to present the best of both 20th and 21st century fine art and design, and to bridge the gap between historical styles and contemporary works, deepening collectors' appreciation for both," notes Fusco. "Along with outstanding specialist exhibitors such as Brad Reh Fine Estate Jewelry, photographer Robert Llewellyn, GF Contemporary of Santa Fe, Landry and Arcari Oriental Rugs, and others too numerous to mention, our fifth anniversary will be celebrated in style."

Special guest programs include a presentation on Friday by AD20/21 Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient, interior designer Vicente Wolf; a Saturday panel discussion "Boston Expressionism: Modernist Art at Mid-Century and Today" with Richard Baiano, Childs Gallery, Judith Bookbinder, author of Boston Modern: Figurative Abstraction as Alternative Modernism, and Katherine French, Executive Director, Danforth Museum and School of Art, to be moderated by Judith Tolnick Champa, Editor in Chief of Art New England; and a Sunday presentation by the Friends of Modern Architecture/Lincoln on the 1957 Alcoa Care-free House, still a private residence and a singular example of the use of aluminum in residential architecture.

The Cyclorama has become a mecca in Boston for the arts, and is also the location for Fusco & Four's annual November show, The Boston International Fine Art Show (BIFAS), now in its 16th year, and The Ellis Boston Antiques Show each October.  For more information on all three shows, visit www.BostonArtFairs.com or call at 617-363-0405.  

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Editor’s Note: • Additional background information and photos on request.

• Interviews are available with Tony Fusco and with many of the exhibitors.

• Media coverage of the Gala and show is encouraged.