|
||||||||||||||||||||
 |
Bj (bee-jay) Averitt has been a Denver Art Museum
member and volunteer since 1963. She was the volunteer executive
board president from 1966 to 1968 and has worked as a staff aide
in the Asian Art Department since 1976. Averitt developed an early
interest in Islamic art after traveling to Egypt as a child. She
studied geology at Smith College and moved to Colorado in 1958
with her husband, who worked for the United States Geological
Survey. In 1973, she earned a graduate degree in art history from
the University of Colorado, Boulder. Averitt generously supports
the museum’s acquisition of Islamic art and has donated more
than sixty objects to its collection. Her generosity is matched
only by her dedication as an educator––prior to becoming
a staff aide, she spent many years as a docent. Through the Bj
Averitt Islamic Art Fund, she continues to enrich the collection
with art objects that represent the diversity and depth of Islamic
art
Dr. Otto Karl Bach (1909–1990) was director of the Denver Art Museum from 1944 to 1974. He formulated a coherent plan for institutional growth early in his tenure and stuck to it tenaciously. He envisioned an encyclopedic museum that would serve one of the country’s largest geographic regions. In 1971, Bach consolidated collections from five separate buildings under one roof—the glass-tiled North Building designed by Gio Ponti and James Sudler. His wife, Cile Miller Bach (1910–1991), collaborated with him to organize a strong museum volunteer corps to augment the limited number of professional staff. She worked closely with docents to meet the museum’s educational objectives and coordinated volunteer fundraising events, many to support acquisitions. In 1978, the museum established an award for outstanding volunteer service named in her honor.
Founding director
of the Urasenke Foundation of San Francisco, Christy Bartlett has practiced and
taught chanoyu, or the Way of Tea, for thirty years. From 1972 to 1981,
she practiced chanoyu under Sen Soshitsu XV, fifteenth generation Head
Master of the Urasenke Tradition of Chanoyu, at their famous tea rooms in Kyoto.
In 1981, Dr. Sen dispatched Bartlett to establish the San Francisco office. For
nearly 25 years, the Foundation has energetically served the Northern California
community with wide-ranging programs for museums, elementary and secondary schools,
universities, and numerous community groups. The core of the Foundation is a rigorous
curriculum structured to serve all those whose hearts incline towards the Way
of Tea. In 2002, Bartlett received the seikyoju, one of the highest degrees
awarded by Dr. Sen and the Urasenke school. In addition, Bartlett received her
Bachelor's degree in Art History (1987) and Master's degree in Asian Studies (1993)
from the University of California at Berkeley and is presently (2005) engaged
in graduate studies in Japanese Literature and Culture. As an interpreter of Japanese
language and culture, Barlett has a special insight into the study of tea.
Tia Beierwaltes (1982-98) wrote the poem “I
Am” in 1998 for her Freshman English section. It was one
of her favorites.
A nephew of
the present king of Mustang in Nepal, Tsewang Jonden Bista was
born in Charang (Tsarang), Mustang. He studied at Dr. Graham’s
Homes, Kalimpong, in the Himalayan foothills of northeast India
and furthered his education at the Trichandra Campus in Kathmandu,
Nepal. He is a tourism entrepreneur, social worker, and one of
the founding members of the Lo Gyalpo Jigme Foundation for Cultural
Conservation, a non-governmental organization that works to uplift
the life of Lobas (People of Lo) in Upper Mustang and to conserve
the rich cultural heritage of the region. On behalf of his foundation,
Bista accepted the Good Partnership Award from the American Himalayan
Foundation in 2006. He runs Royal Mustang Excursions, a trekking
agency, with his cousin, the crown prince of Mustang, and has
led film crews for National Geographic, Discovery Channel,
and WGBH (USA). He was a member of the first rafting expedition
down the Kali Gandaki River and has written a booklet in collaboration
with UNESCO on the Tiji festival, Mustang’s most important
ceremonial celebration. Bista is a dealer of antique carpets and
loves riding horses.
Emma C. Bunker, a research consultant to the
Denver Art Museum’s Asian Art Department, specializes in
the arts of ancient China and Southeast Asia. She received her
graduate degree from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University,
where she studied with Alexander Soper and William Watson. Bunker
is a well-known authority on personal adornment in China, the
art of the horse-riding tribes of the Eurasian Steppes, and Khmer
art of Southeast Asia; her numerous publications have presented
groundbreaking research on these subjects. Bunker travels extensively
throughout Asia—especially in China, Central Asia, Russia,
and Mongolia—and more recently in India, Cambodia, Laos,
and Thailand. She currently lives in Wheatland, Wyoming.
Beatrice
Chang is known for finding promising Japanese ceramic artists
and introducing their works to collectors and museums. She was
born in Shanghai, China, where she studied English and American
literature with a minor in East Asian studies and Asian religions.
She continued her studies at Miami University in Ohio and in 1988
became director of Gallery Zero, a New York gallery specializing
in Japanese ceramics. Gallery Zero evolved into Dai Ichi Arts,
Ltd., where Chang now presents exhibitions that explore traditional
and cutting-edge Japanese ceramic art. In addition to her other
achievements, Chang is an accomplished calligrapher.
In 1970, Somlak Charoenpot
earned a BA in archaeology from Silpakorn University in Bangkok,
Thailand, and in 1975 she received her MA in art history with
museum studies from the University of Denver. During her studies
at DU, she served as an intern in the Denver Art Museum's Asian
art department. Charoenpot holds certificates in museum management
from the Asian Cultural Centre for UNESCO (1985) and the Banff
Centre for Management, Canada (1987). Since returning to Bangkok,
she has been head of the National Museum, Bangkok (1986-1988);
director of the National Gallery (1996-1998); director of the
National Museum in honor of the King's Golden Jubilee (1998-2003);
and executive director of the Office of National Museums, Fine
Arts Department (2003-2005). Recently promoted, she is currently
deputy director general of the Ministry of Culture's Fine Arts
Department and secretary of the Thai National Committee of International
Council of Museums.
Kenneth Chu and Betty Lo formed
the Mengdiexuan Collection and named it after the well-known story, "Dreaming
of a
Educated at
the Berkeley and Davis campuses of the University of California,
Bill (Willard G.) Clark majored in animal husbandry and dairy
science. Starting in 1958, he managed a family ranching and dairy
operation that eventually had one of the top Holstein herds in
the United States. Clark founded World Wide Sires, Inc., and developed
it into the world’s largest broker of frozen bull semen
for artificial insemination, with distributors in 66 countries,
including Japan. On December 5, 1991, the Japanese government
awarded him the Order of the Rising Sun with Rosettes and Golden
Rays, Fourth Level, in recognition of his dedication to the promotion
of better relations between Japan and the United States. In 1995
Clark established the Institute for Japanese Art, a private foundation,
to assemble a collection of Japanese art and sponsor programs
and educational opportunities. His involvement with museums includes
service on the boards and advisory committees of the Asian Art
Museum of San Francisco, Freer Gallery, Los Angeles County Museum
of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
In addition
to being a passionate collector of Japanese bamboo baskets, Lloyd
Cotsen formed the Cotsen Neutrogena collection and donated it
to the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
This collection includes over 3,000 objects and is displayed in
the Neutrogena/Cotsen Gallery. The Cotsen Children's Library at
Princeton University houses his collection of illustrated children's
books, and the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at the University
of California, Los Angeles, promotes the comprehensive and interdisciplinary
study of the human past. Dedicated in April 2001, the Cotsen Auditorium
inside Ahmanson Hall at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles
offers an elegant venue for performing arts and other events.
A
graduate of Princeton University, Mr. Cotsen was a fellow at the
American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Greece. He has
an MBA from Harvard Business School and holds honorary doctoral
degrees from Pepperdine University and the University of Cincinnati.
In 1957, Mr. Cotsen joined Natone, later known as Neutrogena Corporation,
a manufacturer of specialty cosmetics and cleansing products.
He became its president in 1967, chief executive officer in 1973,
and chairman of the board in 1991. Since selling Neutrogena Corporation
to Johnson and Johnson in 1994, Mr. Cotsen has been president
of Cotsen Management Corporation, a personal investment firm.
John R. Curtis
Jr. and Julia B. Curtis are distinguished collectors, both individually
and as a couple. They have personal preferences for certain aspects
of Chinese art and share mutual interests in others. In their
partnership, Julia is the "ceramics person" and John, the "paintings
person." Julia earned a Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania
and wrote her dissertation on the Philadelphia labor movement
which arose between the Panic of 1857 and the Panic of 1873. She
taught at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Old Dominion
University, Norfolk, Virginia. A frequent lecturer and guest curator,
she has published numerous articles on seventeenth and eighteenth
century Chinese porcelains. Since 1988, Julia has been the North
American Representative for the Oriental Ceramic Society, London,
and is on the Board of Trustees, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts,
Richmond. John
earned his degree from Harvard University and served as Deputy
Director of Public Affairs for the Peace Corps. He is a Virginia
businessman with a variety of interests, including the Trellis
Restaurant in Williamsburg, a chain of five gourmet wine and cheese
shops in Norfolk and Virginia Beach, and Bookpress Ltd., an international
antiquarian book firm. He is president of the Virginia Museum
Foundation and a board member of the Greater Williamsburg Trust.
He has served on the boards of the China Institute in America
and the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University.
Dr. and Mrs.
George Fan are both deeply involved with Chinese art. George Fan
is an advisor to the Shanghai Museum, the vice-chairman of the
Arthur M. Sackler Gallery's visiting committee, and a life fellow
of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Katherine Hu Fan
is a distinguished artist who combines the influences of her Chinese
heritage with abstract expressionism. From 1961 to 1989, Dr. Fan
worked for IBM, where he held a number of technical and senior
management positions, including director of planning for IBM's
worldwide research division. He supervised research on microcomputers,
published twenty-one technical papers, and successfully applied
for fourteen patents. In 1989, Dr. Fan left IBM and became founding
Dean of Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He
is chairman and cofounder of FASTXchange, a company specializing
in business-to-business electronic commerce. Born
in Shanghai, Mrs. Fan left China in the late 1940s when she was
eighteen years old, attended Mills College in California, and
received a master's degree from Stanford University, where she
studied Western art. A long-time resident of Ossining-on-Hudson,
New York, she has exhibited her paintings at the Shanghai Museum
and at various galleries in Germany, Italy, and the New York metropolitan
area. Her works are known for their ability to amuse, tickle,
provoke, and challenge their viewers.
Dr.
Guido Goldman's enthusiasm for Central Asian ikats arises from his love of color.
As a teenager, he was attracted to the paintings of Wassily Kandinsky and the
German Expressionists. He connects his fascination with ikats to a Kandinsky painting
that belonged to a family friend. Titled Morning Hour (1908), the tempera and
gouache image depicts warriors dressed in brilliant, multi-colored coats that
are strikingly similar to those in the Goldman Collection. Since the 1970s, Goldman
has amassed the world’s largest and finest private collection of Central
Asian ikat wall hangings. Goldman
served for twenty-five years at Harvard University as founding director of the
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, where he continues to direct several
programs. He is also chairman of the First Spring Corporation, a private family
investment office. Goldman is involved with various organizations and supports
the activities of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Alvin Ailey
American Dance Theater, and the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Theatre of Denver.
Born
in Chicago, Harry B. Goodwin (1876-1971) moved to Grand Junction, Colorado, in
1911. He married Mary Guthrie (d. 1956) of Cleveland, Ohio, in 1913. The Goodwins'
interest in South Asian art developed through Mrs. Goodwin’s brother, Walter
Guthrie, who was the chief representative of the Standard Oil Company in India.
In the mid-1940s, the Goodwins asked Denver Art Museum director Otto Bach if he
was interested in establishing a collection of South and Southeast Asian art at
the museum. Bach jumped at the opportunity and negotiated a series of gifts from
the Guthrie-Goodwin Collection. The Goodwins made their initial gift of South
Asian art in 1946. It was followed in 1948 by additional Indian objects that Mrs.
Goodwin had inherited from her brother. Mr. Goodwin donated a final group of South
Asian objects to the museum in 1971 when he was ninety-four.
Dr.
Marvin L. Gordon practiced orthopedic surgery in San Francisco for over forty
years until his retirement in 1999. He and his wife, Pat, served as volunteers
in a medical training program sponsored by Care-Medico in Kabul, Afghanistan (1976-77),
and Dacca, Bangladesh (1978). After a trip to China in 1978, they became interested
in Chinese art and participated in activities sponsored by the Asian Art Museum
of San Francisco (AAMSF), where they became founding members of the Connoisseur's
Council, a support group for acquisitions. Pat has served as the Council's co-chairperson
and once headed its program committee. In addition, she has been a trustee on
the board of the Strybing Arboretum Society and was once the head of volunteers
in its native plants division. Marvin is a former trustee of several organizations,
including the Society for Asian Art in San Francisco, the Asian Art Museum Foundation,
and the San Francisco Craft and Folk Museum. He is a member of the Asian Art Museum
Commission, the legal entity that holds title to the Avery Brundage Collection
and the associated collections of the AAMSF. He has been a member of the Commission's
acquisitions committee and served as its chairperson for seven years.
In
1921, Charlotte Hill Grant (1894-1973) accompanied her husband, Dr. John Grant,
on his assignment to establish the department of public health at Peking Union
Medical College. During the fourteen years of their stay, Mrs. Grant developed
a passionate interest in collecting what she termed “personal requisites
of court life in old China.” After the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911,
many members of the Manchu aristocracy fell on hard times. By the 1920s, increasingly
impoverished and desperate, they became obliged to sell many of their possessions
to the local antique dealers. Through her husband’s eminent position, Mrs.
Grant had contact with notables such as Der Ling, who had spent two years as a
lady-in-waiting to the Empress Dowager in the early 1900s. Der Ling, whom Mrs.
Grant frequently quoted in her collection notes, drew on her intimate knowledge
of court life to provide information about objects and their social context. Mrs.
Grant eventually acquired over six hundred robes and accessories dating from the
1700s to the early 1900s, nearly all of which are today part of the permanent
collection of the Textile Art Department of the Denver Art Museum.
Hayakawa
Shokosai V was born in Osaka, Japan. He is a fifth generation bamboo artist. In
1951 he began training with his father using the name "Shoha." His first
solo exhibition took place in 1965 at Osaka Mitsukoshi. Three years later, he
became a full member of the Japan Traditional Craft Arts Exhibition. He succeeded
his father as Shokosai V in 1977. He was named Living National Treasure by the
Japanese government in July of 2003.
Upon
retiring from the business world in 1992, Roger Hollander moved from Minnesota
to Cody, Wyoming. In 1995, he resumed collecting photographs, prints, and oriental
carpets. Recently, he has concentrated on collecting trade cloths from India and
garments worn by minority groups in China and other Asian countries. Hollander
has assembled a reference library to research the thousands of items in his collection
and a photographic archive to document them.
Humphrey
K. F. Hui is an internationally known collector of Chinese snuff bottles. His
collection has been exhibited in museums in Hong Kong, Australia, and the United
States. In 1998 and 2002, Mr. Hui staged two single-collector exhibitions at the
art museum of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The first one, The Imperial
Collection, comprised snuff bottles linked to the imperial court, while Inkplay
in Microcosm consisted entirely of inside-painted snuff bottles. Mr. Hui co-authored
the catalogs accompanying both exhibitions. In addition, he helped curate and
write the catalog for Elegance and Radiance: Grandeur in Qing Glass, the Andrew
K. F. Lee Collection, an exhibition of Chinese glass.
Dr. Yan-ming Ip was born and raised in Hong Kong, where East meets West. A practicing psychiatrist, he is a Foundation Fellow of the Hong Kong College of Psychiatrists and a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Apart from his psychiatric practice, Dr. Ip devotes most of his time to Chinese art. Because of his training, he views the field from a humanistic angle. He offers new insights into a work of art by examining it from the "spirit of the artist," analyzes why it was made, and investigates the story behind it. Dr. Ip began collecting Chinese antiques about ten years ago. He started with archaic jades, stone sculptures, and stonewares, then gradually began to focus on ceramics of the Song Dynasty (960-1279), an age of scholarly refinement in China. He prefers to call himself a "lover" of Song ceramics rather than a "connoisseur." To Curator's Circle Past Programs
William
Sharpless Jackson Jr.’s connection with Asia began during World War II when
he served in the Asian Pacific Theater. A half century after he returned to Colorado,
he "saw the light," he says, and made a commitment "to engender
mutual understanding and esteem among all peoples and nations through the appreciation
and enjoyment of Asian art." In February 2000, he sponsored the inaugural
programs for Curator’s Circle: Collectors and Connoisseurs of Asian Art.
A year later, he created the William Sharpless Jackson Jr. Endowment Fund to continue
the Curator’s Circle programs in perpetuity. In July 2001, he established
a second endowment to support exhibitions of Asian art at the Denver Art Museum
and fellowships for scholarly exchanges between the Asian Art Department and art
departments at regional, national, and international institutions, universities,
and museums. To honor his generosity, the Changing Exhibition Gallery for Asian
art was named the William Sharpless Jackson Jr. Gallery in November 2001. Jackson
is a third-generation Coloradoan who practices investment counseling. He and his
father both graduated from Harvard College, Classes of 1942 and 1911. When Jackson
was elected to a two-year term in the Colorado State House of Representatives
(1952-54), his father, then Chief Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court, swore
him into office.
Robert
Jacobsen is the founding curator of the department of Asian Art at the Minneapolis
Institute of Arts and has worked in that capacity since 1976. He has served as
an adjunct professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Minnesota,
where he received his Ph.D. in Asian art history with a minor in Chinese language
and literature. He has also studied at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch,
New Zealand; the University of Minnesota; the University of Michigan; and Shih-fan
Ta-hsueh University in Taipei, Taiwan. Before coming to Minneapolis, he was a
research fellow and translator in the department of antiquities at the National
Palace Museum in Taipei. During
his tenure at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Jacobsen has organized forty-one
special exhibitions, added nearly 7,000 Asian art objects to the permanent collection,
and written thirty-three articles and books on Asian art. In 1998, he supervised
the expansion from five to twenty-two galleries dedicated to the permanent display
and interpretation of Asian art. Jacobsen has delivered over 300 public lectures
in his career and has worked with KTCA Television on the production of Ming in
Minneapolis in 1998 and the six-part series Made in China, which premiered in
June 2002.
Kim
Yikyung has a private ceramics gallery next to the Secret Garden of Changdeok
Palace in
Seoul, South Korea. There, she showcases her work, which ranges from affordable
production pieces to one-of-a-kind objects for museums and private collectors.
Kim has been called Korea's premier ceramist. She has a rare combination of talents:
knowledge of traditional pottery techniques, inventiveness, and proficiency in
English. Born in 1935, she earned a B.S. in chemical engineering from Seoul National
University and an M.F.A. from the highly acclaimed New York State College of Ceramics
at Alfred University. In November through December 2004, the National Museum of
Contemporary Art, Korea, held an exhibition honoring her great contribution to
contemporary Korean art. Her career as advisor and educator reinforces her work
as an artist, which draws on past traditions to express her contemporary work.
Dr.
Simon Kwan began collecting Chinese art in the early 1970s. His interests include
Song dynasty ceramics, archaic jade, ivory, ancient gold ornaments, early glass,
Qing porcelains, and sculptures. He has published five volumes devoted to his
collections. Currently, his primary interest is in collecting Chinese bamboo carvings
of the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties. He will publish a book
on this topic in March 2000. Born
and educated in Hong Kong, Dr. Kwan holds a Ph.D. in Fine Arts and is a prominent
Hong Kong architect, having designed the Hong Kong Academy and the Hong Kong University
of Science and Technology among other buildings. He serves as the head of the
Min Chiu Society of Hong Kong, an organization for collectors of Chinese art,
and is an advisor to the Hong Kong Museum of Art.
An architect and
environmental psychologist by training, Dr. Kenson Kwok began his career working
in social research for Singapore's public housing agency. In the early 1990s,
he made a mid-career change and joined the National Museum, where he was asked
to establish an institution to promote greater understanding of Singapore's ancestral
cultures. As Foundation Director of the Asian Civilizations Museum, he was responsible
for developing the collection as well as converting two buildings into its permanent
home. Dr. Kwok is also a past president of the Southeast Asian Ceramics Society
and a current member of the executive committees of the Asia-Europe Museum Network
and Singapore's LaSalle-SIA College of the Arts.
Sally Yu Leung has
an extensive and varied background in Asian art. She is a collector, lecturer,
and exhibition curator. In 1999, Mayor Willie Brown appointed her as a commissioner
of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, where she serves as senior docent. She
has organized numerous exhibitions, including Celebration of Children (Chinese
American International School, 1993), Blessings and Happiness: Hidden Meanings
in Chinese Folk Art (Chinese Cultural Center, 1998), Firecrackers, Nianhua, Hongbao:
Customs and Artifacts of Chinese New Year (Blue Shield of California, 1999), Lunar
New Year (Oakland Asian Cultural Center, 2000), Pillow Talk (San Diego Chinese
Historical Museum, 2001), and Room Within a Room: Traditional Chinese Beds and
Furnishings (Chinese Culture Center, 2001-02). Ms. Leung is a graduate of the
University of California at Berkeley, where she earned degrees in Oriental Languages
and Physiology. Since 1983, she has been a board member of the Chinese American
International School, where she served as acting head in 1985-86. In partnership
with her husband Hok Pui Leung, she is a principal at Hanley Investment and Realty
Company.
Professor
Li Boqian studied in the Department of History at Peking University and graduated
in 1961. He is now the director for the Centre for Study of Ancient Civilizations
at Peking University and the dean of its School of Archaeology and Museology.
He is also director of the Arthur M. Sackler Museum of Art and Archaeology at
Peking University and a council member of the China Archaeology Society and the
China Yin-Shang Culture Society. Professor
Li specializes in the study of ancient Chinese bronzes. He participates in and
presides over archaeological excavations that provide critical information about
the development of early Chinese bronzes, including those at Erlitou (1700-1500
BC) and at the Jin cemetery in Shanxi province of the Western Zhou period (1050-771
BC). Professor Li has written numerous publications. His most recent work is Studies
of the Structural System of Chinese Bronze Culture.
Born
in Beijing, Dr. Li Chaoyuan has been a curator and deputy director of the Shanghai
Museum since 1997. He was educated at Eastern China Normal University in Shanghai,
where he completed his doctorate in 1990, specializing in Chinese history before
the Qin dynasty (221-206 BC). He entered the bronze department of the Shanghai
Museum in 1990 and researched ancient bronzes of southern China, inscribed bamboo
slips of the Chu state, and bronze tripod vessels in the museum's collection.
Dr. Li has published over fifty articles in various professional journals and
is the author of On the Land Relationship of Western Zhou, published by the Shanghai
People Publishing House in 1997.
When
Vicki and Kent Logan moved to Vail from San Francisco in early 2001, they learned
of the Denver Art Museum's plans to add a new wing designed by Berlin architect
Daniel Libeskind. This prompted them to donate a major gift of contemporary art
to the museum, making its collection among the best in encyclopedic museums across
the country. Kent, who retired from the San Francisco-based Morgan Securities
in 1999, considers this gift as an investment in the community, one that he hopes
will make a significant impact on the cultural opportunities in this region. Vicki
once worked in the Denver Art Museum's publication department before moving to
New York and joining the investment firm of PaineWebber. In its Summer 2001 issue,
ARTnews lists Vicki and Kent Logan among the world's top 200 collectors.
Samuel J. Lurie
graduated from Columbia Law School and heads a firm specializing in construction
accident cases. When he was growing up, Lurie enjoyed the paradoxical educational
advantage of a home virtually without books, music, or art, which he believes
freed him from having to overcome strong early aesthetic impressions. He first
began collecting contemporary British abstract art, then African and pre-Columbian
art. He currently focuses on Japanese ceramics of all periods and has about two
hundred examples in his home, with a strong emphasis on contemporary work. Aesthetic
quality is his sole criterion; he never buys art as an investment. He and Beatrice
Chang have written Fired with Passion, a book that celebrates the three
"golden periods" of Japanese ceramics: middle Jomon (about 2500 B.C.),
Momoyama (1573-1615), and contemporary.
Mona Lutz and Adelle
Lutz are mother and daughter. They share an enthusiasm for collecting bamboo that
was prompted by the personal passion of Walter E. Lutz (1910-2003), Mona's husband
and Adelle's father. Trained in the Ohara School of Ikebana, Mona was president
of Ikebana International before moving from Japan to Los Angeles in 1979. Adelle
is an artist and performer. Her works have been exhibited in the Victoria and
Albert Museum, Fashion Institute of Technology, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Her credits for film and stage include both acting
roles and costume design. Her talents are seen in Something Wild (1986),
True Stories (1986), Wall Street (1987), Beetlejuice (1988),
Silence of the Lambs (1991), and Beyond Rangoon (1995), in which
she played Burmese Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.
Ma
Weidu is founder and director of the first private antiquities museum in Beijing.
Established in January 1997, the Guanfu Classic Art Museum houses more than a
thousand objects, including a complete scholar’s studio of the Qing dynasty
(1644-1911). A lover of antiques since childhood, Ma had little experience with
collecting until the early 1980s, when he was in his late twenties. He enjoys
seeing the relationship between his objects and the lifestyles of the people who
once owned them. To study furniture, he considers it essential to understand the
architecture and living spaces that originally housed them. In
the early 1980s, Ma worked in a publishing house as a literary editor and wrote
“popular” fiction to supplement his income. He later ventured into
film making with his friend, the well-known novelist Wang Shuo. He left the publishing
business in the late 1990s to establish his museum, now located in the lower level
of an office building at the center of Beijing.
A
third-generation artist, Maehata Shunsai (b. 1964) received the official title
Master of Traditional Arts (dento kogeishi) in 1994. This recognition,
which precedes designation as a Living National Treasure, had also been awarded
to his father, Maehata Gaho. Shunsai has exhibited his pieces at prestigious venues
in Japan since the 1980s. Curator's Circle 2005 was his third lecture in the United
States and his first in Colorado.
Born in Greenwich,
Connecticut, Walter C. Mead (1866-1951) moved to Denver at the
age of eighteen to work for the Denver Water Company, then presided
over by his uncle, Walter S. Cheesman, after whom Cheesman Park
is named. Mead traveled extensively and gathered works of art
for his collection while seeing the world.
The first Chinese and Japanese objects in the Denver Art Museum collection were gifts from Walter C. Mead (1866–1951). He pledged his collection to the people of Denver in 1915, and it remained in the custody of the Denver Museum of Natural History until 1932. It was then transferred from City Park to the art museum's new galleries in the Denver City and County Building. In 1933, Dr. Konai K. Miyamoto (1877–1963), a dentist and member of Denver’s early Japanese community, was named the museum’s honorary curator of oriental art. Miyamoto was then president of the Japanese Association of Colorado and one of the leaders of the Japanese community who reportedly met with Colorado Governor Ralph L. Carr (1887–1950) to discuss the possibility of harm coming to Japanese residents at the outbreak of World War II because of anti-Japanese sentiment. Carr urged racial tolerance and protection of the basic rights of Japanese-Americans, a view that is generally thought to have cost him his political career.
Curator
of Asian art at the Denver Art Museum since 1973, Ronald Y. Otsuka received his
graduate degree from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, where he
studied with Alexander Soper, Stella Kramrisch, and Richard Ettinghausen. In addition
to teaching Asian art at Rutgers University, University of Colorado, and University
of Denver, he is the recipient of research grants from the Asian Cultural Council,
Bunkacho (Agency of Cultural Affairs, Japan), and National Endowment for the Arts.
Otsuka has organized and administered more than sixty Asian art exhibitions for
the Denver Art Museum, Colorado State University, and Japan Pavilion (Epcot Center).
He is a trustee of the William and Alice Hosokawa Fellowship Program, a board
member of the Golden Sun Foundation for World Culture, and an appointee to the
Governor’s Asian Pacific American Advisory Council (Colorado).
Kimiko
and John Powers (1916-99) began collecting Japanese art in 1960. Their collection
started with the purchase of a unique pair of six-panel landscape screens by Kusumi
Morikage and a hanging scroll titled Courtesan Blowing Soap Bubbles by Shiba Kokan.
These pieces formed the basis of a grand collection of Japanese art from the fourth
to mid-nineteenth centuries. The original emphasis for the collection was haboku
(broken ink) paintings. Later, the focus shifted to Buddhist art, especially Zen
painting, and literati painting of the eighteenth century. More than three hundred
objects in the collection have been documented and published in Traditions
of Japanese Art (1970) and Extraordinary Persons (portfolio of screen
paintings, 1988; three volume set, 1999). In its Summer 2000 issue, ArtNews
ranked Kimiko Powers among the top 200 collectors in the world. Kimiko was born
in Tokyo, where she attended university. In 1963 she came to the United States
and married John Powers. John's intense
passion for art and life helped them make many friends in the modern art world.
Together they built up an impressive collection of 1960s contemporary art featuring
artists like Andy Warhol and Willem de Kooning. Kimiko now resides in Colorado
and Japan and carries on John’s legacy and love of all art. A favorite quote
of John’s was: “Nothing in the world is yours to keep / You may have
but not hold / In the end you receive only that which you have given” (Bradford
Shank, Fragments).
William G. Purdy (1917–96)
was a successful manager of people and projects. He led the development of Titan
I, II, and III rocket projects and the Mission to Mars team at Martin Marietta
Corporation, which successfully landed two unmanned spacecraft, Viking I and II,
on the red planet in the mid-1970s. Purdy believed that communication is the key
to success of every team effort. "There are no problems that can't be solved,
no mistakes that can't be rectified," he said. "Quality control is a
culture. It starts from step one––by everyone." A
student of human nature, Purdy was deeply committed to arts education and community
improvement. As a volunteer in the late 1970s and early 1980s, he helped the Denver
Art Museum develop a long-range plan and operations system.
Professor
Quan Kuishan studied archaeology in the Department of History at Peking University
and graduated in 1975. He is now an associate professor at the University's Institute
of Archaeology, Cultural Relics, and Museum Studies. He is researching ceramic
archaeology and conducting a systematic study of South Chinese tombs of the Sui
(581-618) and Tang (618-907) dynasties. He has led excavations of several kilns,
including sites at Fengcheng in Jiangxi province, Ruzhou in Henan province, and
Cixi in Zhejiang province. He has published numerous papers and excavation reports.
His most recent publication is Research on the Stacking Methods Used in the
Hongzhou Kiln Firing.
In
the 1970s, Shaykha Hussah al-Sabah collected abstract art by Western artists like
Alexander Calder, Luciana Fontana, and Kenneth Noland, and by contemporary Arabic
artists. In 1975, her husband, Shaykh Nasser al-Sabah, brought home his first
Islamic object, a thirteenth-century glass perfume bottle. In it, she recognized
the notion of abstraction that she treasured in modern art. From then on, the
great diversity of Islamic art challenged the couple to stretch their minds to
understand the vast geography and history of the Islamic art world. Shaykha Hussah
has been the director of the Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah (House of Islamic Antiquities)
since it opened in 1983. For her, perhaps the most magnetic aspect of Islamic
art is its calligraphy, written by many hands in almost every medium, which entices
her to comprehend the many levels of meaning embodied in the elegant script.
Fay Shwayder
(1916-2005) believed there was no point in doing something if
you did not do it well. She started playing piano and tennis as
a teenager and excelled at both. Later, she became an avid collector
of Asian art, filling her spacious home with scroll paintings,
screens, and a wide variety of antiques. Daughter of Jesse
and Nellie Shwayder, she was the nontraditional member of
the family. Instead of marrying someone who went into the family
business (Samsonite Corporation), she married university philosophy
professor Bertram Morris in 1935. Shwayder attended the University
of Denver and Mills College in Oakland, CA. She was inducted into
the Colorado Tennis Hall of Fame and won the state singles championship
twice. She was a financial supporter of the Denver Art Museum,
Aspen Music Festival, University of Colorado, University of Denver,
and several musical groups, including the Takács String
Quartet. She donated funds for the Denver Botanic Gardens to build
a teahouse in its Japanese garden and for the DAM's Asian Art
Department to acquire objects that are exhibited in the Jesse
and Nellie Shwayder Galleries. Among the works acquired with her
support is a Gupta-period image of Shiva.
Her initial reaction to the Indian sculpture was that it was too
damaged, but she quickly realized its significance and encouraged
her sisters Ruth Luby, Dorothy Heitler, and Norma Degan to join
her in purchasing it for the collection.
In 1971, to
honor the Shwayder family’s continuing support, the Denver
Art Museum dedicated the Jesse and Nellie Shwayder Galleries for
Asian art in its newly-opened building. Born in Black Hawk, Colorado,
Jesse Shwayder (1882-1970) was one of eleven children. When he
was six, his family moved to Denver and his father opened a grocery
store. There, Jesse’s first jobs were delivering groceries
and selling newspapers. After graduating from West High School,
he went to work at his father’s new business, a used furniture
store. The Shwayder children were all hard workers and fine musicians.
Jesse won renown as a singer. At the age of nine, he performed
as a soloist at St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral under the
sponsorship of Wilberforce Whiteman, choirmaster at the Cathedral
and music director for Denver Public Schools. Jesse also played
the violin and started his own dance orchestra. In 1903, Jesse
opened a luggage shop and in 1907 he married Nellie Weitz (1886-1977).
In 1922, he started a luggage manufacturing company that later
became Samsonite Corporation. After Jesse’s death in 1971,
shares in the firm went to the Jesse and Nellie Shwayder Foundation,
a non-profit trust for charitable and education purposes. The
Foundation, Samsonite Corporation, and the children of Jessie
and Nellie Shwayder (King Shwayder, Ruth Luby, Dorothy Heitler,
Fay Shwayder, and Norma Degan) made contributions to the Denver
Art Museum’s building campaign in the late 1960s, and in
gratitude the names of Jesse and Nellie Shwayder names continue
to be associated with the Asian art galleries.
Dr.
Jenny So is Professor of Fine Arts at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and
former Senior Curator for Chinese Art at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M.
Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Among the exhibitions
she organized for the Sackler Gallery are Music in the Age of Confucius (2000)
and Traders and Raiders on China's Northern Frontier (1995-96). In addition to
the catalogues for these exhibitions, her publications include Eastern Zhou Ritual
Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler Collections (1995), Splendours of the Orient
(Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1985), and numerous articles on Chinese jade, lacquer,
and metalwork.
Robert C. Tang began
collecting Chinese art in 1986, quite unexpectedly, when a dealer showed him a
small piece of jade. He looked at it and put it down. The dealer suggested that
he keep it for a few days and carry it around with him. He did, and was hooked.
He continued to collect Chinese jades and is now preparing a catalog of his collection
which also includes Chinese metalwork, painting, calligraphy, ceramics, stone
sculpture, and furniture. He has lent objects from his collection to the Denver
Art Museum and the Sackler Gallery in Washington, DC. He is a member of the prestigious
Min Chiu Society, an organization of Hong Kong art collectors. Affiliated
with Gray's Inn in England, Tang has been a Barrister-at-Law, Supreme Court of
Hong Kong, since 1969. He has served on the Queen's Counsel (1986-1997) and Senior
Counsel (1997-present). In the past, he has served as a member of the Judicial
Services Commission and held the chairmanship of the Criminal and Injuries Compensation
Board and the Securities and Futures Appeals Panel. Currently, he is Recorder
of the High Court and chairman of the Town Planning Appeal Board and the Independent
Police Complaints Council.
Born
in 1925, Dr. Tseng Yuho (Betty Ecke) married art historian Gustav Ecke (1896-1971)
in Beijing in 1945. The couple moved to Hawaii in 1949, where she received her
master's degree from the University of Hawaii. She later earned her doctoral degree
from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. Dr. Tseng taught at the
University of Hawaii and is currently a consultant to the Honolulu Academy of
Arts. Her paintings have been in numerous exhibitons, including shows in Beijing,
Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, Munich, Zurich, and Paris. She has organized exhibitions
of Chinese calligraphy, painting, and folk art, and published books and articles
on various aspects of Chinese art. A recipient of many awards, she was recognized
as a "Living Treasure of Hawaii" in 1990.
Dianne Perry Vanderlip is the Denver Art Museum's curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, a position she has held since 1978. She has guided the growth of her department in both breadth and quality. Her international reputation and the 2006 reinstallation of her galleries in the museum's new wing attracted Vicki and Kent Logan's interest. Vanderlip displayed selections from the Logan Collection in the exhibition Retrospectacle: 25 Years of Collecting Modern & Contemporary Art in 2002-03.
Patterson
Williams is the master teacher for Asian art and textile art at the Denver Art
Museum. She has been a museum educator since 1966. She writes, speaks at conferences,
and acts as a consultant on museum education topics in the United States and Asia.
She teaches children, teachers, and adults about Asian art and textiles and works
in collaboration with the museum's curators to create exhibitions and installations
that are visitor- and family-friendly. She trains museum volunteers to work with
school tours, conducts visitor evaluations, and also teaches summer art camps
on China and Japan, for six, seven and, eight year olds. Williams worked at the
Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Walters Art Museum before coming to Denver
in 1980.
Dr.
Henry Wong is an American-educated dentist, and his wife, Maisie, is a British-trained
lawyer. Their interest in collecting Chinese jade was a happy by-product of their
education outside Hong Kong. Maisie's fascination with Chinese objects developed
when she lived in London, where she met friends interested in Chinese culture
and made frequent visits to the British Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum.
She has been involved with the Friends of the Hong Kong Museum of Art since its
inception in 1988 and has served as its chairman since 1993.In early 2001, the
Friends sponsored the spectacular exhibit Buddhist Sculptures: New Discoveries
from Qingzhou, which attracted worldwide attention. In 1999, Maisie represented
Hong Kong in the Tenth Congress of the World Federation of Friends of Museums,
held in Sydney, Australia. Henry
has always believed that there is great similarity between the work of a dentist
and a jade craftsman. The techniques may differ, but the dexterity, care, and
patience necessary to do the job well are the same. His respect for the difficulties
of working jade grew when he tried to repair a belt buckle dating to the Ming
dynasty (1368-1644). He ruined three dental burrs without making a single dent
in the jade buckle! It also made him realize that even with modern-day technology,
there are no short cuts in the art of jade carving.
Dr.
Shing Yiu Yip is keenly interested in Chinese history, culture, and antiquities,
and has collected Chinese jades, ceramics, paintings, and calligraphy. In the
mid-1980s, his interests turned to a new field, Chinese furniture of the Ming
dynasty (1368-1644). Selections from his collection of classic Chinese furniture
have been exhibited at the Denver Art Museum and in Hong Kong, London, Phoenix,
Singapore, and Washington, D.C. Dr. Yip praises the beauty of huang huali
wood in two catalogues published in 1991 and 1998 that document his extensive
collection of Ming furniture. Trained
at London's St. Bartholomew's Hospital and Harvard University, Dr. Yip is a respected
Hong Kong physician and Honorary Professor of Dermatology at the Jinan Medical
College in Guangzhou. He lives in Hong Kong with his wife, Man Tong, an accomplished
calligrapher.
Alice
Zrebiec is the Textile Art curator at the Denver Art Museum and a curatorial consultant
based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Since coming to the Denver Art Museum in 1996,
she has curated several exhibitions which highlighted Asian textiles: Ikat:
Splendid Silks of Central Asia from the Guido Goldman Collection; Inspiration
and Imagination: Cross-Cultural Influences in the Textile Arts; Textile Art: Recent
Acquisitions; Cultural Coatings; Fabulous Floral Fabrics; Lighter Than Air: Gauze
Robes from China; and No Boundaries: Art + Fiber. She also collaborated
with the Asian Art Department and the American Conference on Oriental Rugs to
present Prayer Rugs of the Caucasus. Zrebiec received her Ph.D. in art
history from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. She was the curator
of textiles in the department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at The
Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1979 to 1984. A recipient of numerous professional
fellowships and grants, Dr. Zrebiec has published widely, consulted for various
museums, and lectured internationally. In 2004, she was a speaker at the International
Council of Museums meeting in Seoul, Korea. |
