Page 8 - Bonhams Passkon and Philanthropy MET Mjuseum March 2024 Asia Week

Passion and Philanthropy:

An American Tradition

Each of the twenty-four illustrious figures whose donations The great Expositions of the late 19th century – the 1867
form the corpus of this sale contributed their time, wealth, Paris Exhibition Universelle, the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial
and passion to support and expand the great collections of Exposition, and the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in
the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They played their part in Chicago - and a core group of collector-advisors and dealers
a continuing tradition of philanthropy founded in mid-19th provided a venue for and guidance to the great early collectors
century America, when highly successful business leaders of the Gilded Age from the 1870’s to the 1920’s. In Europe,
of the Gilded Age, their partners and families assumed a role Samuel Bing, Matsui Bunkio, C.T. Loo, Joseph and Henry
of cultural leadership and responsibility in their growing cities Duveen - and in America, Samuel Avery, William Sturgis
to enrich the lives of the public. Using well-honed business Bigelow, Edward Morse and Ernest Fenollosa, assisted Henry
skills that made them millionaires in the financial houses, O. Havemeyer, Samuel T. Peters, John Pierpont Morgan,
railroads, stock yards, and department stores, these leaders of William Thompson Walters Charles Lang Freer, Charles
industry founded and ran libraries, orchestras and expositions, Stewart Smith, and Benjamin Altman, among many others, to
designed to serve the public and financed to do so. One of form great collections of Chinese and Japanese art which now
the major results of these business-civic partnerships was the reside in these major institutions.
founding of four major museums in the short span of ten years, As a commissioner of Fine Arts to the 1862 Paris Exhibition
led by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1870), the Boston Universelle, Samuel P. Avery (1822-1904), already a collector
Museum of Fine Arts (1876), the Philadelphia Museum of Art of European paintings and Chinese porcelain, encouraged
(1876) and the Art Institute of Chicago (1879). his fellow colleague and friend, William Thompson Walters

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