Our Team
Jonathan Berger
Founder + Principal
Quarry Fine Arts is an art appraisal and advisory practice founded by Jonathan Berger in 2020. Specializing in Modern and Post War art, Jonathan Berger is an appraiser, advisor and dealer whose expertise covers painting, sculpture, ceramics, works on paper and decorative arts. With over 30 years’ experience in the fine art world, Jonathan is relied upon by private, professional and institutional clients on issues concerning valuation, provenance, collection building and management. He provides a wide range of independent appraisal services for the purpose of estate planning and insurance coverage, as well as counseling clients on issues involving provenance research, misattributions, and market valuation. As an art advisor, Jonathan assists private and institutional collectors with building, deaccessioning, cataloguing, handling, conserving and displaying collections.
Jonathan is an Associate Member of the Appraisers Association of America (AAA), the oldest and most prestigious professional organization of personal property appraisers, and is compliant with Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP).
Jonathan grew up in Pasadena, California where he gained an early appreciation for art and antiques. Since childhood, Jonathan has had a deep appreciation for great design and has immersed himself in making objects as a woodworker, ceramicist, sculptor and jewelry designer. This hands-on experience gives him a unique understanding of how things are crafted. With this practical foundation, Jonathan attended UC Berkeley, where he earned a degree in Art History, studying under Anne Wagner and T.J. Clark. This added layer of rigorous academic research has given him an encyclopedic knowledge of fine and decorative arts of the 19th and 20th centuries. After graduating in 1991, Jonathan co-founded an antiques business in the Bay Area specializing in old masters, daguerreotypes, fine and decorative arts sourced from dealers and auction houses in the U.S. and abroad.
In 2000 Jonathan combined his love of art with his interest in design and opened Jonathan Berger Interior Design, with a focus on bringing quality, integrity and provenance in sourcing unique artwork and furnishings to his design clients. Research is key to his work and, to this end, he designs across a myriad of styles and periods, bringing historical perspective to each project.
Jonathan splits his time between New York, Los Angeles and Santa Fe, New Mexico. He regularly attends art and antiques fairs in Europe and the United States as well as accompanying clients on buying trips to London, Paris, Belgium, and other European cities.
Deborah Rothschild
Associate
Deborah Rothschild is the former Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Williams College Museum of Art. She earned her Ph.D. and M.A. from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, in addition to a certificate in museum studies from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her book Picasso's ‘Parade’: From Street to Stage, which accompanied an exhibition held at the Drawing Center in New York in 1991, was cited as one of the top five art books of the season by the Wall Street Journal.
A specialist in late 18th and early 20th century as well as contemporary art, Deborah has overseen more than 60 exhibitions, organizing one-person shows of work by Ed Ruscha, David Hammons, Adrian Piper, Alfredo Jaar, Jaqueline Humphries, Glenn Ligon, Tony Oursler and James Turrell among others. She has contributed articles and reviews to The Metropolitan Museum Journal, The Art Journal, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Antiques, Arts Magazine, and Sotheby’s at Auction.
Two of her exhibitions retain the distinction of drawing the highest visitor attendance in WCMA’s history to this day: Prelude to a Nightmare: Art Politics and Hitler’s Early Years in Vienna 1906—1913 (2002) was a controversial exhibition that garnered international media coverage; including segments on CNN, NPR, WCBR Boston and articles in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Jerusalem Post, the Irish Times, The Wall Street Journal and more. Making it New: The Art and Style of Sara and Gerald Murphy (2007—8) placed the glamorous jazz age couple in the context of the artists and writers by them, including Picasso, Leger, Stravinsky, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and many more. Gerald Murphy’s surviving 8 paintings were also shown. This exhibition received global press and was awarded the International Association of Art Critics award for best University museum exhibition of 2007.
Over the course of her career, Deborah has served as a visiting professor at New York University, the School of Visual Arts, Pratt Art Institute, and Williams College. She has served on numerous boards including the Loeb Art Center, Vassar College and the American Federation of Arts. She conducted classes on connoisseurship for Christie’s Auction house, NY in 1996, 1998, 2000, and 2002. In addition to exhibition venues, Rothschild has presented lectures at the Boston Athenaeum, the National Arts Club (NYC), the Cosmopolitan Club (NYC), the Chilton Club (Boston), Guild Hall (LI), and the College Art Association. She was a nominator for the Heinz Foundation Awards from 2005—2011.
From 2014 to 2018 Rothschild served as consulting curator for the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) and its monument dedicated to the 6000+ people lynched in the South from 1877 to 1950. The memorial monument to the unlawful torture and murder of U.S. citizens occupies six acres in Montgomery, Alabama. As a result of Deborah’s work, Hank Willis Thomas, Titus Kaphar Carrie Mae Weems, Sanford Biggers, Glenn Ligon, and Shimon Attie were commissioned to create monumental artworks on the memorial grounds and the corresponding Legacy Museum.
Robert Nachman
COO
Robert Nachman has had a lifelong interest in art. Growing up in New York City, he would spend afternoons visiting the Met, Whitney and Frick museums, among others, under the tutelage of Francis Naumann, the preeminent Dada and Surrealist expert. After attending Dartmouth College, where he majored in art history, Robert embarked upon a career as a marketing executive, first in the fashion industry and then in home furnishings. At QFA Robert oversees all business activities and interacts with select clients on complex projects.