Department of Asian Art records

The current Department of Asian Art evolved from the specialized “Oriental collections” under the domain of the Museum’s Department of Ethnology. Over time, the focus of the Asian art collection moved beyond collecting decorative and crafts objects, objects representing life and customs, to acquiring objects of high aesthetic and cultural value:

Various forces, such as curators, collectors, donors, and changing cultural perceptions, helped shape the department’s evolving focus and character.

In 1903, the Asian art collection officially became part of the Department of Ethnology when Chinese and Japanese objects were transferred from the Department of Fine Arts. Many of these early objects were donated by Carll H. deSilver and Colonel Robert B. Woodward, who were both members of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and SciencesBoard of Trustees and Museum Governing Committee.² According to curator Amy Poster, “De Silver and Woodward may be considered the earliest patrons of the Asian art collections.”³

The Department of Ethnology’s first curator was Stewart Culin who acquired objects in quantity and with variety. The diversity of collections within the Department of Ethnology would later provide the basis for the development of other curatorial departments, including the Department of Asian Art. From 1909 to 1910, Culin traveled to China and Japan returning with approximately 1,800 objects for the Museum.⁴ His collecting practice was motivated by a scholarly interest in other cultures and a desire to educate the public about non-European cultures.

Culin’s early trips to India, China, Korea, and Japan from 1909 to 1914 established the core for what would later become the Department of Asian Art. While Culin’s collecting efforts favored education, donor’s gifts “tended to reflect collecting tastes of the gentry who were [the Museum’s] benefactors.⁵ These important gifts helped further develop the Asian art collection with the addition of such objects as Chinese jade and stone carvings from the Estate of Colonel Robert B. Woodward and a collection of Chinese cloisonné enamels from Samuel P. Avery, Jr.

In 1920, the “Oriental collections” were separated from the ethnography collection and housed in their own galleries. According to the Museum’s annual report for 1920, the Museum was initially motivated to create an Oriental art collection in order to inspire and meet the needs of American artists and industries. In line with this practical application of the collection materials, the Department of Ethnology offered loans to department stores and manufacturers, provided information to artists and inspired various industries with its exhibitions: “As in former years the Department of Ethnology has made itself of the utmost utility to the industries of Greater New York, especially placing its collections at the service of public designers and students.”⁶

In addition to these industry related activities, the department continued to refine its various galleries, including new and expanded installations of Tibetan, Indian, Chinese, and Japanese objects. Throughout the 1920s, the department continued to acquire objects from China, Japan, Tibet, and India. Among some of the notable accessions during this period was Culin’s purchase of nine pages of the Qissa-i Amir Hamza of which four remain in the Museum collection and represent one of the jewels of the Indian painting collection.⁷

The next significant phase of the department occurred after Stewart Culin died in 1929. Herbert J. Spinden was hired as the new curator of Ethnology and Tassilo Adam held the dual role of associate curator of Ethnology and assistant curator for Eastern Art from 1929 to 1931. He later became curator of Eastern and Near Eastern Art in 1931. The appointment of a separate curator to look after the Asian art collection was evidence of the growing significance of these objects.

Major changes affecting the Museum and the Asian art collection continued throughout the 1930s. Until this point in time, the collection was designated under the Department of Ethnology. In 1931, an independent Department of Eastern and Near Eastern Art was established. During the first years of the department, Adam focused his attentions on renovations and reinstallations of the permanent collection. In addition, the department undertook several contextual exhibits, which included a completely restored Damascus house, four recreations of Chinese rooms, and a Hindu street front.

In 1934, Philip N. Youtz became the Director of Museums. In the same year, the Museum sought to distinguish itself from the other major New York City museums. The Governing Committee concluded that there was a place “for a museum of a different type emphasizing the history of cultures, and the social and industrial relations of art.”⁸ The resulting policy called for a new plan of arranging its collections by culture and in historical sequences. This new plan completely changed the installation of the Oriental collections, which were dismantled and moved to its current second floor setting.

From 1934 to 1946 under the direction of Laurance P. Roberts, the name of the department was changed from Eastern and Near Eastern Art to the Department of Oriental Art. He also oversaw the Museum’s new plan for the installation of the new galleries. The department’s first new gallery featuring Near Eastern Art opened on April 5, 1935 with a loan exhibition of Persian miniatures and pottery. Other new galleries followed in the subsequent years: three new galleries devoted to Chinese, Indian, Korean, Tibetan, and Siamese art from the Museum’s collections and a new gallery of Japanese art.

Under Roberts’ guidance, “the pattern of Asian art acquisitions changed in emphasis to focus on individual objects of high aesthetic quality.”⁹ Roberts concentrated on acquiring Japanese screens, ceramics and paintings and traveled to Japan in 1940 to view and purchase Japanese art. During the 1940s, Louis V. Ledoux, a Trustee of the Brooklyn Museum and notable connoisseur-collector of Japanese prints also enhanced the Japanese collection by donating several distinguished prints from his own collection to the Museum’s Japanese print collection, which had been established earlier in the century.

As the department continued to evolve under Roberts’ direction, individuals outside of the Museum’s sphere also helped shape its collections. During Roberts’ tenure, the Museum was advised by “the preeminent scholar of Indian art Ananda K. Coomaraswamy,” whose influence can be seen in the Museum’s acquisition of sixty-nine objects from the Indus Valley site of Chanhu-Daro and its first paintings from Rajasthan and the Punjab Hills in India.¹⁰ Other areas of the collection benefited from donors, such as the Pratt family who helped strengthen the East Asian and Islamic collections. Frederic B. and Caroline Pratt gave the Museum such important objects as a Japanese Kan’ei era (1624-44) genre painting, A Cherry Blossom Viewing Picnic, and a late sixteenth-century Persian manuscript of Kamsah of Nizami. Herbert L. Pratt, the son of Frederic and Caroline Pratt, also presented the Museum with a valuable gift of a fragment of a sixteenth-century Safavid Iranian carpet, known as the “Angel Rug.”

In 1939, Roberts was appointed director of the Museum while simultaneously serving as curator of Oriental Art. Activities in the department were limited during World War II, especially by the absence of Roberts who joined the United States Army in 1943. During his absence, his wife Isabel Spaulding Roberts became the acting director and also administered the affairs of the Department of Oriental Art.

Although the Museum’s activities were restricted by the war, the department continued to produce popular exhibitions and to receive generous donations. During the early part of the 1940s, significant gifts were made to the Asian art collection, including Mr. and Mrs. Frederic B. Pratt’s donations of the Egyptian fifteenth- to sixteenth-century Mamluk Carpet and a sixteenth-century Iznik Spherical Hanging Ornament from Turkey.

In 1946, both Laurance and Isabel Roberts resigned as director of the Museum and Charles Nagel, Jr. was appointed as the new director. In the same year, Laurance Roberts also relinquished his position as the curator of Oriental Art. From the time of Roberts’ resignation to the appointment of George N. Kates as the new curator of Oriental Art in January 1947, the department functioned without a curator. Following the war, the department resumed purchasing objects of interest and value in 1947.

Kates was a collector of Chinese art, in particular furniture and metal objects. Prior to his curatorial appointment, he had organized the Museum’s Chinese Household Furniture exhibition in 1946, derived from his own extensive personal collection of Chinese furniture. In 1948, he published Chinese Household Furniture. As curator, he also mounted the exhibition of Chinese Metalwork (1949), revised the Chinese gallery and reinstalled the Japanese gallery. The Chinese collection was enhanced by the donation of Chinese ceramics by the Frank L. Babbott family and by the loans of Chinese bronzes and jades by Ernest Erickson and Alastair B. Martin, both collectors and trustees of the Museum.

George J. Lee, the department’s first specialized curator, served from 1949 to 1959. He was an expert on Chinese art and undertook the reinstallation of the Asian art galleries and the reassessment of the holdings in the Museum’s storerooms. Lee made “an admirable and successful effort…to weed out the collections, exhibiting the most aesthetically significant objects while attempting to make the collections more representative of the cultures which produced them.”¹¹ Lee’s efforts also resulted in an increased scholarly interest in the Museum’s Oriental collections.

During this period, the department restricted its limited funds to the purchase of major objects in order to improve the quality of the collection.¹² Lee made significant additions to all of the collections, but most of the important purchases were made in the field of Chinese ceramics. One of the most significant acquisitions was the Augustus S. Hutchins bequest of 360 Chinese ceramics in 1952. Included in this bequest was the very impressive fourteenth-century Yuan-dynasty (1272-1368) blue and white wine jar of fish amid water plants. In addition, Alastair B. Martin and the Waterman family donated several Chinese objects.

The importance of donors to the growth and development of the department became evident during this time with “the beginning of several such long relationships, whereby the consummate eye of the collector elevated certain sections of the department’s collection to a new level.”¹³ Amongst these relationships was the ongoing generous support of Ernest Erickson and Alastair B. Martin, who continued to provide loans to the Chinese collection and thereby enhanced the appearance of the Chinese galleries. From the 1950s, Ernest Erickson helped to enrich the department’s Islamic, Indian and Southeast Asian collections through his long-term loans to the department. In 1986, the Ernest Erickson Foundation eventually gave 474 of Erickson’s loans to the Museum, and “they are among the most important gifts in magnitude and over-all impact on the quality of the collections.”¹⁴ Donors, such as Martin and Dr. and Mrs. Frank Babbott, continued to supplement the department’s collections with several significant gifts. In 1956, the Korean collection was greatly elevated by the gift of a twelfth-century Koryŏ-dynasty (918-1392) celadon ewer presented by Mrs. Darwin R. James III. According to curator Amy Poster, this ewer is now considered one of the world’s most remarkable Koryŏ celadon ceramics.¹⁵

In the summer of 1959, Lee resigned his position as curator of Oriental Art. Andrée L. Cooney, who was formerly Lee’s assistant, was appointed as a part-time acting assistant curator. During her tenure, the purchasing policy set by Lee was continued and most of the department’s activity centered on Indian and Islamic art.

The Indian and Islamic collections developed further under the guidance of the department’s assistant and associate curator in charge, Lois Katz. She “set the pace for the ensuing period, not only rediscovering treasures hidden in storage for decades, but also establishing a new art-historical approach to the collection, a pattern for further studies, and areas of collecting for the future.”¹⁶

Starting in the 1960s, the department embarked on several ambitious exhibitions. The reinstallation of the Indian gallery coincided with a planned special exhibition of Asian Art from the Collection of Ernest Erickson and the Erickson Foundation, Inc. (1963 - 1964). Major portions of the Islamic and Indian galleries were renovated in order to properly exhibit Erickson’s extensive collection of Indian and Islamic art. A catalogue was also created to accompany this exhibition. In 1967, the department made its first foray into the world of international shows with two major loan exhibitions: Japanese Ink Painting and Calligraphy from the Collection of the Tokiwayama Bunko Foundation and The Kevorkian Foundation Collection of Rare and Magnificent Oriental Carpets: Special Loan Exhibition.¹⁷

During the 1960s and early 1970s, the department attracted numerous loans in the areas of Islamic, Indian, Southeast Asian, and Chinese art. Much of the Islamic collections were developed during this period through the efforts of Katz and Charles K. Wilkinson, the Museum’s first Hagop Kevorkian Curator of Islamic Near Eastern Art (1969-1974).¹⁸ In 1969, the Hagop Kevorkian Foundation fully endowed a new curatorial position for Middle Eastern art and archaeology, which resulted in the creation of the new Department of Middle Eastern Art and Archaeology under the curatorship of Charles K. Wilkinson. Distinct from the Department of Oriental Art, this new department was responsible for the Ancient and Islamic Middle East collections.

The Islamic art collection grew under the direction of Wilkinson. During his tenure, a gallery devoted to the Islamic world was installed in 1972. Wilkinson built upon a collection started by Stewart Culin to amass a comprehensive and preeminent collection of later Persian art of the Qajar dynasty (1785-1925).¹⁹ The department’s collection benefited from gifts from Wilkinson’s own collections. After 1979, the Department of Middle Eastern Art and Archaeology was reorganized. At which time, the Ancient Near Eastern collection was transferred to the Department of Egyptian and Classical Art and the Islamic collection was moved to the Department of Oriental Art.²⁰

The department was under the guidance of two curators during the 1970s. Stanislaw Czuma served as curator from 1970 to 1972 and was succeeded by Robert Moes who served as curator from 1973 to 1988. Czuma’s major achievement was a new installation of a gallery of Indian and Southeast Asian art, which exhibited several important objects acquired during his tenure. Moes’ approach to curatorship resembled Stewart Culin’s method of collecting objects of cultural significance. Moes, a specialist in Japanese art, acquired objects in the areas of Japanese folk art and contemporary ceramics. Additionally, he wrote the catalogue, The Brooklyn Museum: Japanese Ceramics (1979), which was the first in a series of the Museum’s collection catalogues on Asian Art.

During the 1970s, the department’s activities included the reinstallation of the Asian art galleries and several special exhibitions. Within the galleries was an area devoted to a permanent installation of Korean art, the first of its kind in the New York City area. Some of the exhibitions were inspired by important gifts from donors or led to new acquisitions. In 1973, Dr. Bertram H. Schaffner’s gift of Indian terracotta sculptures resulted in the Figures in Clay: Terracottas from Ancient India exhibition. The exhibition A Flower for Every Season: Japanese Paintings from the C.D. Carter Collection (1975) led to several important acquisitions of Japanese screens. In addition, the Museum gave special attention to Asian art when it hosted two special exhibitions organized by the People’s Republic of China, Chinese Paper-Cutting Art of Hou-Tien (1974) and Peasant Paintings from Huhsien County of the People’s Republic of China (1977).

Through the ongoing support of donors, like Dr. and Mrs. Robert Dickes, Mr. and Mrs. Harry Kahn and Sidney B. Cardozo, the department acquired Japanese and Korean objects, Southeast Asian ceramics and Japanese painting collections. Long standing supporter, Alastair B. Martin continued to help develop the department’s collections with such gifts as a significant early Chinese ritual bronze wine vessel.

The momentum of activities in the department continued into the 1980s. The department “became the focus of considerable activity with a roster of exhibitions and significant acquisitions.”²¹ Special exhibitions became an important aspect of the department’s activities. Many of the exhibitions drew largely from the department’s own collections. Some of these successful exhibitions included Mingei: Japanese Folk Art (1985); Korean Art from The Brooklyn Museum Collection (1987); and Lacquer: A Panorama of Asian Decorative Arts (1988). These exhibitions highlighted the department’s holdings from some of its earliest to its newest acquisitions. Some of these exhibitions concentrated on areas of the collection that had not been viewed in recent years.²²

As the Asian art collection grew, the department’s acquisition policy, which had evolved over the decades, was now focused “on acquiring unique objects of exceptionally high aesthetic quality that complement[ed] and relate[ed] directly to its permanent collection.”²³ Donor support continued to enhance the department’s collections. Some of the most impressive gifts were to the Islamic collection. The department received from the Beaupre Charitable Trust a gift of nineteen carpets in memory of Joseph V. McMullan in 1984. In the same year, Sheila Canby, the associate curator of Islamic Art, organized the exhibition Oriental Carpets from the Collection of Mrs. Joseph V. McMullan (1984), which opened the newly refurbished Islamic Gallery. The following year, Canby co-curated the exhibition Curator’s Choice: Islamic Art in Africa (1985) and developed a project to exhibit highlights of the Islamic collection in the reinstalled Islamic galleries. Through the continued support of the Hagop Kevorkian Fund, the department focused on Qajar art by organizing an international symposium on The Art and Culture of Qajar Iran in 1987 and producing a supplemental checklist entitled The Art of Qajar Iran in 1989.²⁴

In 1988, the Department of Oriental Art was renamed the Department of Asian Art. In the same year, Amy G. Poster, the current head of the department, was appointed curator and chair. Poster had already been active in the department prior to her appointment. As an associate curator, she developed and selected the Japanese portion of the Light of Asia: Buddha Sakyamuni in Asian Art (1984-1985) exhibition and authored the Japanese sections of the corresponding catalogue. In 1986 in cooperation with the Festival of India in the United States, she curated From Indian Earth: 4,000 Years of Terracotta Art, which was the first international exhibition of Indian terracottas and established the Museum as a center of terracotta art collecting and research.²⁵

In the 1990s, the curators and the Museum began to reexamine the Museum’s “contribution to museum practice in the field of Asian art and culture” and the department began “new research on the way objects came into the collection in the early decades of the century.”²⁶ In keeping with this vision of research, the department embarked on several scholarly activities. The department invited foreign scholars to view its collections and initiated contact with international institutions that would be interested in exhibiting objects from the Museum’s collections. One such research project brought international recognition to the Museum’s Ainu collection when a team of Japanese scholars surveyed it. Additionally, the Museum participated in three inventory-publication projects examining the collections of Japanese painting and sculpture, Japanese ukiyo-e prints, and Korean art and culture.²⁷

During this period, some of the exhibitions showcased the department’s collections. One of the department’s first acquisitions, the Samuel P. Avery, Jr. collection of cloisonné enamels, provided material for The Blue of Jingtai (1990) exhibition. In 1994, the Realms of Heroism: Indian Paintings at The Brooklyn Museum exhibition presented 250 Indian paintings and drawings from the department’s collection and celebrated the publication of the Museum’s catalogue raisonné. Layla S. Diba, Hagop Kevorkian curator of Islamic Art, curated the first major international exhibition of Qajar art, Royal Persian Paintings: The Qajar Epoch 1785-1925 in 1998. In the late 1990s, the department “recognized the importance of objects that transcend categorization according to national borders and has sought to emphasize the cross-cultural significance of Asian art and culture in its major acquisitions.”²⁸

As in past decades, donors and their gifts influenced the direction of the department’s collections. The 1991 gift of a life-size Cambodian Torso of a Male Divinity (deva-raja)from Dr. Bertram H. Schaffner and continuing gifts of Khmer and Indian objects from Georgia and Michael de Havenon helped the growth of the Cambodian art collection. These gifts exemplified how contributions of important works influenced the nature and development of the collections. Other collectors, inspired by the Schaffner and de Havenon gifts, contributed additional works to the Asian collection.

The Department of Asian Art, like other curatorial departments in the Museum has evolved to reflect the changing nature of new scholarship and cultural perceptions, curatorial direction and institutional policy, and tastes of donors and patrons:

The department entered a new phase when Amy G. Poster, curator and chair, retired from her position in June 2006.