Page 167 - C.T. Loo A paper about his impact and activities in the Chinese art Market

167

connected with Eastern Art and archaeology we shall be left behind.” 348 From the 1910s

onwards, American museums eagerly articulated their rising status in comparison with

their European counterparts. An Art News report proudly announced, “The Metropolitan

Museum has ‘arrived’, as the French would say, or in other words, has reached the

prominence as an art institution that the great art museum of Europe have long

349
enjoyed”. The opening exhibition of the University Museum in 1916 was acclaimed as
350
the greatest exhibition of Oriental art ever made in the United States or Europe. The

competition between America and Europe continued in the 1930s. A Parnassus review

stated that the 1938 bronze exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York

was by no means inferior to the 1935-6 International Exhibition of Chinese Art in

London, “It has been customary to mention the great display of bronzes in the

exhibitions of Chinese art held at London during 1935 and 1936 as affording a unique

opportunity to compare bronzes side by side. The Metropolitan Museum has at least

equaled the bronze sections of the London Exhibitions and is the more remarkable in that

it is composed solely of objects belonging to collections in the United States.” (Davidson

1938, 19)

Compared to America, Europe had a longer tradition of collecting Chinese art

particularly Ming and Qing ceramics and decorative art objects. The detrimental impact

of World War I on the European art market and the availability of early Chinese art

348 Okakura Kakuzo. “The Development of the Department of Chinese and Japanese Art,
May 9, 1908.” Part I, p. 8, folder: Okakura Kakuzo, 1908, Chinese and Japanese
Department Business, box: Okakura Tenshin, Sorted Papers, AAOA-MFA.
349 “The Museum Complimented,” American Art News, October 23, 1915, 4.
350 American Art News, January 29, 1916.