Page 41 - C.T. Loo A paper about his impact and activities in the Chinese art Market

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launched exhibitions of his collections at the City Art Museum of St. Louis, and the

Toledo Art Museum.

By the mid-1930s, Loo’s business in the U.S. had acquired an encyclopedic stature.

The culmination of Loo’s dealership was signaled by three feats. In 1936, Loo’s new

galleries opened in the Fuller Building at 41 East 57th Street in New York with an

impressive exhibition entitled Chinese Art Through the Ages. In 1937 Loo published the

Index of the History of Chinese Arts: An Aide-Memoire for Beginners, summarizing his

three-decade dealership and connoisseurship. In 1941, Loo organized a clearing

exhibition/sale of over 1,000 objects in his New York galleries. All major categories in

all major periods in Chinese art were well represented.

Loo’s business success in America in the late 1930s, however, was overshadowed by

the impending world war. While Loo was active in America in the early 1940s, he was

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separated from his families, who were in German-occupied France. From the late 1930s
onwards, Loo, with his connection with the Chinese government, played a significant role

in the war relief drive and Chinese-American cultural diplomacy, such as the 1939

exhibition Three Thousand Years of Chinese Jade in New York, a fund-raising event for

civilian sufferers in China.

Strategic Shift and New Impetus: 1941-1950

The early 1940s marked the end of an era for the collection of Chinese art in America.

Loo sadly noted in the 1940 catalogue An Exhibition of Chinese Stone Sculptures, “…I

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C. T. Loo to K. Tomita, October 31, 1940, folder C. T. Loo, box: I to L. 1936-1947,
AAOA-MFA.