Page 6 - Metropolitan Museum Collection September 2016

While the Metropolitan
Museum of Art’s earliest
acquisitions of Asian art
date from 1879, it was not until
1915 that a separate Department
of Far Eastern Art was created, the
name of which was changed in 1983 to
the Department of Asian Art. The collections
of this department are now amongst the largest
of those held by the Museum, while visitors from
Asia form the most rapidly growing demographic within
the six million people who come to the galleries of this
internationally renowned institution every year. In Asian Art at
the Metropolitan Museum, Maxwell K. Hearn, chairman of the
Asian Art department, noted:

‘Since its establishment in 1870, the Metropolitan Museum has
based its approach to collecting on the ambitions of its founders
to present an encyclopedic survey of world art. But to a unique
degree, the Museum’s collection of Asian art also refects the
melting pot that is New York and the individual passions and
knowledge of the many private collectors who have invigorated
this city and this institution. It is largely thanks to these
enlightened patrons that today the Museum is able to exhibit one
of the world’s most comprehensive collections of the paintings,
sculptures, textiles, and decorative arts of Asia.’1

The current essay will focus on just a few of the patrons, items
from whose collections have contributed to the diverse Chinese
ceramic holdings of the Museum.

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