Page 25 - Bonhams Passkon and Philanthropy MET Mjuseum March 2024 Asia Week

The Collection of Spoons catalogue cover

at Columbia University, in memory of Henry, who had been the children. Mary was herself a watercolorist and collected spoons from
University’s first professor of architecture. To support the library, the numerous American and European sources and which she later
Averys donated a collection of 2,000 books, mostly in architecture, donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
archaeology, and the decorative arts, a large number of Henry’s
original drawings, as well a $30,000 gift to establish an endowment Sources:
to grow the library’s collection. In the years following her husband’s https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctvrxk3fq.9
death, Mrs. Avery donated their collection to The Metropolitan https://www.metmuseum.org/art/libraries-and-research-centers/
Museum of Art, which included over 100 Asian ceramics. Mr. Avery’s watson-digital-collections/manuscript-collections/samuel-putnam-
ledger books, and many his letters and diaries, are now also housed avery-papers
at the Museum. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Putnam_Avery
https://research.frick.org/directory/detail/10
The next tranche of items given or purchased by the Avery fund https://academic.oup.com/jhc/article-abstract/31/2/403/5133454?re
(Samuel and Mary Ogden Avery) entered the Metropolitan Museum directedFrom=fulltext
Collection in 1909. Like her husband she was an avid art collector
and a benefactor to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Columbia
University. Mary Ann Ogden Avery was born in New York, in 1925,
the daughter of Henry Aaron and Katharine Conklin Ogden. She
married Samuel Putnam Avery in 1844. Together they had six

PASSION AND PHILANTHROPY: CHINESE ART FROM THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART | 23