Page 19 - Avery Brundage Ancient Bronzes and Collecting Biography

Notes

1. Wallace, “Wooing Brundage,” 6.
2. See, for example, Schöbel, The Four Dimensions of Avery Brundage; Johnson, “Avery Brund-
age”; Oates, “Avery Brundage Believed Purity Was for Others”; Guttmann, The Games Must Go
On; Lefebvre d’Argencé, “The Avery Brundage I Knew”; Bartholomew, “The Avery Brundage
Collection” and “Working with Mr. Brundage”; Shangraw, “Avery Brundage” and “The Early
Years of Avery Brundage’s Collection”; and the section on Avery Brundage in Treasures 2, no. 4
(Spring 1999): 1–15.
3. Guttmann, The Games Must Go On, 2.
4. Ibid., 4.
5. Schöbel, The Four Dimensions of Avery Brundage, 13.
6. Guttmann, The Games Must Go On, 39–40.
7. Lefebvre d’Argencé, “The Avery Brundage I Knew,” 63.
8. For example, in 1936 Brundage led the U.S. Olympic team to the “Nazi Olympics” in Berlin
despite a widespread and intensive boycott campaign in the United States, believing that sports
transcend politics. In 1972 he famously said, “The Games must go on,” after the massacre of
Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists. For detailed analysis of Brundage’s involvement and
leadership in controversial issues in the Olympics, see Guttmann, The Games Must Go On; see
also Johnson, “Avery Brundage,” and Oates, “Avery Brundage Believed Purity Was for Others.”
9. Lefebvre d’Argencé, Bronze Vessels of Ancient China, 42.
10. For examples of animal-shaped vessels with lids still extant, see Watson, Ancient Chinese
Bronzes, pl. 30b, and Bagley, Shang Ritual Bronzes, 122 fig. 176.
11. Cahill, “Archibald G. Wenley”; Pope, “Archibald Gibson Wenley.”
12. Wenley, “A Hsi Tsun from the Avery Brundage Collection,” 41.
13. Shangraw, “The Early Years of Avery Brundage’s Collection,” 4, 7.
14. Bartholomew, “The Avery Brundage Collection,” 121. Bartholomew did not specify the
source of her information for this statement. In an e-mail exchange on February 12, 2009, she
informed me that she heard it from Clarence Shangraw. The acquisition date of 1953 mentioned
by Bartholomew could not be correct, however, as the vessel had already been published by
Wenley in 1952 as belonging to Brundage (see Wenley, “A Hsi Tsun from the Avery Brundage
Collection,” 41).
15. Bartholomew, “Working with Mr. Brundage,” 4.
16. The locations of J. T. Tai’s gallery in 1951 and 1953 are ascertained by the business letters
to Brundage that Tai wrote on his letterhead and that are now part of the Asian Art Museum
archives.
17. A press release by Sotheby’s Hong Kong in August 2010 announcing a sale of Qing imperial
porcelain in the collection of the J. T. Tai Foundation on October 7, 2010, includes a photo show-
ing J. T. Tai in 1956 in his office labeled as located at 810 Madison Avenue.
18. Information about Cadillac cars can be easily obtained through Google or on Wikipedia, for
example, http://www.100megsfree4.com/cadillac/cad1950/cad52s.htm; http://www.100megs
free4.com/cadillac/cad1950/cad53s.htm; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Eldorado.
19. For example, in a letter to J. T. Tai dated January 13, 1953, of which a carbon copy is pre-
served in the Asian Art Museum archives (“J. T. Tai & Co.,” Folder 1), Brundage wrote, “Thank
you for sending the photographs of the new pieces which you have, which look very interesting.
I hope the prices are not too high. Remember our motto ‘Top Quality and Low Price.’ ” In an ear-
lier letter in the same archives (Box 19, “C. T. Loo,” Folder 24), addressed to the dealer C. T. Loo
and dated March 18, 1950, following the news of Loo’s retirement from the antique trade and his
liquidation sale, Brundage wrote, “Your announcement was like an atomic bomb to the Oriental

A Unique Pair: The Bronze Rhinoceros and Its Collector, Avery Brundage 219