Page 12 - 2019 September 12th Christie's New York Chiense Art Chicago Art Institute

led to vibrantly-colored ceramics and ancient ritual bronzes. In 1922, signifcance and objectivity with which scholars viewed the category.
Buckingham presented The Art Institute with a seminal gift of three Moreover, it provided a dedicated curatorial vision for the increasing
important Chinese ritual bronzes in memory of her sister, Lucy Maud number of bequests from Chicago collectors in the pre-war period.
Buckingham.
In 1925, real estate executive Russell Tyson founded the Orientals,
“Two things were signifcant about [Kate Buckingham’s] gifts and a like-minded group of Art Institute patrons committed to fostering
artistic collections,” noted Chicago’s Townsfolk magazine in 1939, two the museum’s eforts in Asian art. Born in Shanghai and raised in
years after the collector’s death. “She gave nothing with her own name Boston, Tyson grew up surrounded by his family’s collection of Chinese
attached to it. Her gifts were always memorials to others, and she kept furniture and works of art; in his own collecting, he sought out choice
for her own private use no object of art without frst ofering it to one Chinese stoneware and mortuary sculpture from the Han through Tang
of Chicago’s museums.” Buckingham’s inspiring example of patronage dynasties. Fellow members of the museum’s Orientals group included
would resonate even after her death, as the collections named in honor Kate Buckingham and Martin A. Ryerson, an Art Institute trustee who
of her brother and sister expanded far beyond their original scale. held the status of Chicago’s wealthiest man. Through signifcant fnancial
Today, The Art Institute’s Buckingham Society pays tribute to those support—including a $50,000 gift to establish the Ryerson Library—he
donors who include the museum in their estate planning. stands among the most infuential donors in the museum’s history.
The opening years of the twentieth century saw growing interest in Ryerson’s private collection of paintings by Monet, Sargent, Homer,
Chinese history and culture in Chicago, stimulated by the work of and others would be gifted to the museum along with Asian works
scholars such as Berthold Laufer at the Field Columbian Museum of art. It was a refection of the age that the same notable collectors
(now the Field Museum of Natural History). Laufer became a trusted who bequeathed masterworks of Western art also provided The Art
source of knowledge to many collectors, and lent Asian works of Institute with exceptional pieces from the East. Joseph Winterbotham,
art from the Field’s collection to be exhibited at The Art Institute; in for one, underwrote the purchase of exceptional modern paintings,
1920, he was appointed Honorary Curator of Chinese Antiquities at while also gifting his private grouping of Chinese works. The much-
the museum. In its early days, The Art Institute exhibited Chinese lauded example of Potter and Bertha Honoré Palmer, whose bequest
works in the style of the age, with numerous ceramics, metalworks, of paintings form the core of the museum’s Impressionist collection,
and lacquer pieces displayed in European-style glass cabinets. It was emulated by their son, Potter Palmer II. For almost two decades,
was a fashion consistent with the taste of collectors such as Samuel Potter II served as president of the museum’s board of trustees
Mayo Nickerson, whose gift of nearly 1,300 works of Chinese and and a member of the Orientals. He lent and bequeathed numerous
Japanese “curios” in 1900 constituted the museum’s earliest Chinese Chinese works of art to the museum, a tradition of giving continued by
works. Nickerson was a founder of the First National Bank and an subsequent generations of the Palmer family.
avid collector of art from around the world. His imposing Gilded Age
A TRADITION OF PATRONAGE
mansion on the city’s Near North Side—now home to the Driehaus
Museum—was flled with a striking collection acquired on international The latter decades of the twentieth century saw notable growth in the
travels. Included in Nickerson’s 1900 bequest were a number of Department of Oriental Art, including the expansion and renovation of
paintings by nineteenth-century French artists including Delacroix and its galleries and exhibition spaces. In 1988, the Department of Oriental
Ingres; the museum frst hung these pictures much as Nickerson had and Classical Art became the Department of Asian Art, refecting
done, in dialogue with his collection of Chinese pieces. the comprehensive nature of a collection that now features strong
examples of Chinese bronzes, ceramics, and jade; a truly exceptional
TRANSFORMATIVE GIFTS
assemblage of Japanese prints; fne Southeast Asian and Indian
Financial gifts by collectors such as Nickerson, Buckingham, and sculpture; and important Korean art. At the heart of the museum’s
others proved transformative in establishing endowments that Asian art is the legacy of pioneering collectors: names such as
signifcantly developed the museum’s Chinese holdings. Among the Buckingham, Tyson and Ryerson, joined in more recent years by fgures
more adventurous of Art Institute benefactors was Lucy Monroe including James and Marilyn Alsdorf and Dorothy Braude Edinburg.
Calhoun, who lived in China with her husband, American envoy The outstanding Chinese works of art of The Art Institute of Chicago
William J. Calhoun, from 1909 to 1913. Utilizing funds wired to her by represent a tradition of cultural and civic patronage that continues to
fellow museum patrons, she purchased some of The Art Institute’s this day—reminders of the power of art to enlighten and inspire.
best examples of Buddhist robes and Chinese textiles, and was gifted
an important scroll of peonies by the Empress Dowager Longyu,
the consort of The Guangxu Emperor. It was not until 1922, some Robbie Gordy
forty-three years after the Art Institute’s founding, that it formally Associate Vice President, Christie’s New York
established a curatorial department dedicated to Asian art. For
earlier collectors of the era, Asian works were often intended to grace
homes otherwise decorated in ‘traditional’ Continental styles. The new
Department of Oriental Art, as it was then known, heralded the growing
opposite:
The Art Institute of Chicago, present day.
Photography © The Art Institute of
Chicago.
芝加哥藝術博物館今景
圖片提供：芝加哥藝術博物館。
10 C H I N E S E A R T F R O M T H E A R T I N S T I T U T E O F C H I C A G O