Collecting Asian Art

Rather than centering on the well-known collections in Western European and North American museums, Collecting Asian Art turns to museum collections of Asian art in Central Europe which emerged from the late 19th century onwards. Highlighting the dimensions of Central European connectedness, this volume explores how these collections evolved and changed under changing cultural and political conditions from the pre-World War I to the post-World War II periods. With a primary focus on collections of East Asian, South Asian, and West Asian art in Vienna, Prague, Berlin, Warsaw, Kraków, Budapest, and Ljubljana, it outlines the transregional connections and networks that gradually developed. Collecting Asian Art locates Asian art across the twentieth-century in Central Europe via discourse and ideology, and discusses key collections and the way individual collectors built their networks. It thus explores transregional connections that developed through collecting activities and strategies in the prewar, interwar and postwar eras. Contributors also examine the personal connections between a group of Indologists from postwar Prague and modernist Indian artists from the early 1950s to the 1980s and also discuss the systematic archiving of East Asian art collections in Slovenia. A concluding conversation looks at colonisation and decolonisation from a broader perspective by approaching it through recent art historical discussions on the global dimensions of modernism. By defining the region through its external relationships and its entanglements with regions across Asia rather than as a self-contained unit, the contributions in this volume outline how these transregional connections and networks evolved and changed over time, thus highlighting their singularity in comparison to developments in Western Europe. Based on recent research, Collecting Asian Art reveals neglected sources while reinterpreting well-known ones.

The volume looks at how South Asian art was sourced for external appreciation at a variety of institutions in Europe, North America, and Asia from the mid-19th century onward. These essays speak to the colonial legacies that created such collections but that now must be viewed though a post-colonial lens. The volume also addresses contemporary concerns for todays's museums: collecting, building and practices, provenance, and repatriation.

Travel, Collecting, and Museums of Asian Art in Nineteenth-Century Paris examines a history of contact between modern Europe and East Asia through three collectors: Henri Cernuschi, Emile Guimet, and Edmond de Goncourt. Drawing on a wealth of material including European travelogues of the East and Asian reports of the West, Ting Chang explores the politics of mobility and cross-cultural encounter in the nineteenth century. This book takes a new approach to museum studies and institutional critique by highlighting what is missing from the existing scholarship -- the foreign labors, social relations, and somatic experiences of travel that are constitutive of museums yet left out of their histories. The author explores how global trade and monetary theory shaped Cernuschi's collection of archaic Chinese bronze. Exchange systems, both material and immaterial, determined Guimet's museum of religious objects and Goncourt's private collection of Asian art. Bronze, porcelain, and prints articulated the shifting relations and frameworks of understanding between France, Japan, and China in a time of profound transformation. Travel, Collecting, and Museums of Asian Art in Nineteenth-Century Paris thus looks at what Asian art was imagined to do for Europe. This book will be of interest to scholars and students interested in art history, travel imagery, museum studies, cross-cultural encounters, and modern transnational histories.

While readers will come away from Chinese Art with a nuanced understanding of Chinese culture, the volume is also a work of art in its own right—a must-have collectible for any devotee of Chinese art and culture. Assouline’s Ultimate Collection is an homage to the art of luxury bookmaking—the oversized volume is hand-bound using traditional techniques, with several of the plates hand-tipped on art-quality paper and housed in a luxury silk clamshell.

Travel, Collecting, and Museums of Asian Art in Nineteenth-Century Paris examines a history of contact between modern Europe and East Asia through three collectors: Henri Cernuschi, Emile Guimet, and Edmond de Goncourt. Drawing on a wealth of material including European travelogues of the East and Asian reports of the West, Ting Chang explores the politics of mobility and cross-cultural encounter in the nineteenth century. This book takes a new approach to museum studies and institutional critique by highlighting what is missing from the existing scholarship -- the foreign labors, social relations, and somatic experiences of travel that are constitutive of museums yet left out of their histories. The author explores how global trade and monetary theory shaped Cernuschi's collection of archaic Chinese bronze. Exchange systems, both material and immaterial, determined Guimet's museum of religious objects and Goncourt's private collection of Asian art. Bronze, porcelain, and prints articulated the shifting relations and frameworks of understanding between France, Japan, and China in a time of profound transformation. Travel, Collecting, and Museums of Asian Art in Nineteenth-Century Paris thus looks at what Asian art was imagined to do for Europe. This book will be of interest to scholars and students interested in art history, travel imagery, museum studies, cross-cultural encounters, and modern transnational histories.

Thanks to Salem sea captains, Gilded Age millionaires, curators on horseback and missionaries gone native, North American museums now possess the greatest collections of Chinese art outside of East Asia itself. How did it happen? The China Collectors is the first full account of a century-long treasure hunt in China from the Opium Wars and the Boxer Rebellion to Mao Zedong's 1949 ascent. The principal gatherers are mostly little known and defy invention. They included "foreign devils" who braved desert sandstorms, bandits and local warlords in acquiring significant works. Adventurous curators like Langdon Warner, a forebear of Indiana Jones, argued that the caves of Dunhuang were already threatened by vandals, thereby justifying the removal of frescoes and sculptures. Other Americans include George Kates, an alumnus of Harvard, Oxford and Hollywood, who fell in love with Ming furniture. The Chinese were divided between dealers who profited from the artworks' removal, and scholars who sought to protect their country's patrimony. Duanfang, the greatest Chinese collector of his era, was beheaded in a coup and his splendid bronzes now adorn major museums. Others in this rich tapestry include Charles Lang Freer, an enlightened Detroit entrepreneur, two generations of Rockefellers, and Avery Brundage, the imperious Olympian, and Arthur Sackler, the grand acquisitor. No less important are two museum directors, Cleveland's Sherman Lee and Kansas City's Laurence Sickman, who challenged the East Coast's hegemony. Shareen Blair Brysac and Karl E. Meyer even-handedly consider whether ancient treasures were looted or salvaged, and whether it was morally acceptable to spirit hitherto inaccessible objects westward, where they could be studied and preserved by trained museum personnel. And how should the US and Canada and their museums respond now that China has the means and will to reclaim its missing patrimony?

Every year, thousands of visitors flock to the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, the largest museum devoted exclusively to the arts of Asia in the United States. Featuring more than 18,000 artworks, the museum's world-class collection highlights the unique material, aesthetic, and intellectual achievements of Asian art and culture. This book presents two hundred and thirty exemplary works spanning both ancient and modern times. Among its many treasures, readers will find a Japanese clay jar from 3000-2000 BCE, a Chinese bronze Buddha dating to 338, a seventeenth-century Indian painting from the Shahnama (Book of Kings), a mid-twentieth-century Korean wrapping cloth, and a new Thai work made from textile, window mesh, safety pins, and amulets. A collaboration between museum curators, artists, educators, and collectors, the book also takes an in-depth look at fourteen masterpieces selected for their beauty, rarity, and historical importance. Stunning full-color photographs and new texts—including a foreword by museum director Ja Xu—offer fresh perspectives on both ancient and contemporary objects. A handsome addition to any art history collection, this volume is an essential resource for museum visitors as well as anyone interested in Asian art.

"Based on a symposium co-organized by Guolong Lai and Jason Steuber."