CLP 177: 2007 Lecture given at Berkeley Art Museum, April 27, 2007. in connection with the exhibition "Honoring a Tradition, Honoring a Teacher: A Tribute to James Cahill"

BAM Lecture, April 27, 2007

Lecture for exhib.: "Honoring a Tradition, Honoring a Teacher: A Tribute to James Cahill"

Thanks to Julia White and others for arranging this, welcome to all my former students and colleagues and others, some who have come long distances to be here on what is for me a grand occasion. My wife Hsingyuan is here, and our boys, Julian and Benedict; my sister Carol has come; and many former students and friends.

Feel a bit like the subject must have felt on old TV program "This is Your Life" in which people from the person's past were assembled to remind him of bygone days. There will be lots of greetings and reminiscing to do in reception afterwards and tomorrow; a lot of stammering and fudging on my part, no doubt, as I try to connect names with old familiar faces. For now, I have a lecture to deliver.

My lecture this afternoon will be two things: as usual: a response to
exhibition Julia White has mounted upstairs to commemorate my association with UAM/BAM; and reminiscences of my happy relationship with this institution, over some 43 years. And if someone with a good memory objects that Museum hasn't been open that long—I'll get to that later. First of all, want to express my thanks and admiration to people I've worked with here: the directors: Peter Selz, the late Jim Elliott, Jackie Baas, Kevin Consey; curatorial staff, espec. Susan Teicholz (about whom more later) Sheila Keppel, Lucinda Barnes, Julia White; the longtime, wonderfully reliable and helpful Director of Registration Lisa Calden. Could continue, through Eve Vanderstoel, Lynn Kimura, Barney of installation staff and Jesse of guards, but too long a list. What I'll have to say is mostly based on my memory, which has been pretty faulty lately; but distant memories are generally clearer in my head than recent ones, and I'll tell them as I remember them, with no guarantee of accuracy about dates or other hard information. (Although Lucinda and others have been helpful in filling in some of these for me.) Won't try to be chronological, either for paintings in exhib. or for my engagement with the Museum, but will ramble back and forth across the years.

When I say I'll talk about "my happy relationship" with this institution, it means I'm leaving out the problems I've had with Museum, and that Museum has had with me—shifting relationships and some friction with History of Art Dept. and University, the more or less disasterous year (1974-5) when I was Acting Director. Some of you may remember that; let's try to forget it. I was never a good administrator, and certainly not that year. I'll talk mainly about the acquisition and exhibitions of Chinese paintings. When I talk about my own collecting, as I have in previous lectures here, it's a series of stories about how an academic could put together such a collection without ever having much money; if I talk about building the Museum collection, it's essentially the same: how we managed to bring together an impressive collection of Chinese ptgs (and Japanese, but that's another story) without ever having much in acquisition funds, at least until very recently. Story in which a lot of people can take credit for generosity and help at crucial moments. And since some of them are here today, we're celebrating a collective achievement, not just mine.

SS Chen Hongshou. Scholar Teaching Women Students. Detail. Woman arranging blossoming plum branch in vase. Former Contag Col.--that is, col. of Victoria Contag, German scholar, who put together a collection of Ming-Qing paintings while she was in Shanghai in 1940s. This work by late Ming (early 17th cent.) fig. artist Chen Hongshou, well known through its publication in Laurence Sickman's part of old Sickman and Soper Art and Architecture of China, book that everybody used in teaching (not much else available then--black-and-white slides of the illustrations could be purchased in sets). In 1964, while I was still a curator at the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., but was already planning to move out to UC Berkeley for teaching, heard about plan for a university museum, with Peter Selz to be brought in as director. Met with him in NY at MOMA, talked about his plans, how I might take part in them. Having had some years of curatorship at Freer, didn't want to give up Museum involvement, exhibitions, all the handling of original works of art and using them in my teaching. So I became committed to UAM some years before it opened.

Museum didn't open, at least in this building, until 1970. A few exhibitions before that in the old power-house behind Sproul Hall; later it was discovered that floors too weak to support crowds, still not fixed? Nothing in Asian art held there so early.

--S. Another detail. Other woman is painting picture of bamboo in ink. Antique bronzes, other objects on stone table, all drawn with Chen Hongshou's characteristic distortions. First exhib. of mine to be shown in new UAM: Fantastics and Eccentrics in Chinese Painting (1968?) Had opened at Asia House Gallery in NYC in 1967. This Chen Hongshou one of ptgs in it: Victoria Contag collection was then kept at Nelson Gal. in K.S. Larry Sickman and I worked to help her arrange sale of most of col. to Avery Brundage, whose col. was coming to S.F.; bady needed paintings. Brundage had no eye for paintings, or real liking for them, and hoped to buy them as a group to save making individual choices. In the end, the sale didn't happen; blocked. Another story I could relate at length, but won't. This one had a villain, who deliberately blocked acquisition of whole collection by Avery Brundage, whose protégé he was. But he's deceased, and there's a Latin saying about not speaking ill of the dead, so I'll skip that. Top pieces lost; the New York collecor/dealer/artist C. C. Wang bought whole collection, pulled the best pieces out to keep for himself. Including everybody's favorite Shitao album. But most of ptgs in col. were then made available individually to Bay Area institutions and individuals, and quite a few of them ended up in this museum, one way or another.

Docent program organized in S.F. to train people to take public tours of new museum with Brundage col., otherwise help in publicizing it. For several years I lectured for it, in S.F. Participants were mostly women, some of them prominent San Franciscans; some great people among them, who took their studies very seriously, several went on to take masters degrees at Berkeley; enriched my life, and Bay area Asian art scene in general. Can't list names; but one who was very generous was Elizabeth Hay Bechtel. Also gave us portrait painting by late Ming portraitist Tseng Ch'ing, others. And a few others from that collection acquired through other means, I'll speak of later.

SS Chen Hongshou album. Small; undated but early work of artist. I myself had begun collecting long before, while I was still a curator at the Freer, buying mostly in Japan (showing everything I acquired to the Freer people and giving them option of taking anything for what I had paid). Had begun collecting even earlier: while a Fulbright student in Japan, 1954-5, surprised to find that one could buy respectable and interesting Ch ptgs without spending much. Did it with a lot of participation by my then-wife Dorothy, who took big part in the project, had a good eye for paintings.

SS. This small album I found at Yüshima Seido, a large Confucian temple and (in effect) Chinese culture center down in the valley at Ochanomizu in Tokyo. Bookstore there, with Chinese books; this album actually found in their bookstore, among books, bought for equiv.of $15. Of course I didn't believe for a minute that it was really by Chen Hongshou, but attractive, interesting.

SS. Gradually, over the years, began to suspect it might be an early work of the artist, deliberately stiff, like lacquer ptg; Chen Hongshou was at that time involved w. popular arts, or high-level crafts. As years passed, several other examples of albums in this curious manner came to light and were accepted by others, confirming the genuineness of this one. We gave it to UAM (declared at its real value, it was a tax writeoff.)

SS. Chen Hongshou, Su Wu and Li Ling. In recent years, as many of you know, extraordinarily generous gift to Museum from an Anonymous Donor has enabled the Museum to acquire all the best of my Chinese paintings, those I received as my part of divorce settlement with my former wife Dorothy; others are owned by our children Nicholas and Sarah. This was one of 40 best of my ptgs purchased by BAM over several years, with funds from this Anon. Donor.

-- S. (tell story) Su Wu and Li Ling. Political theme; such ptgs used as gifts to political figures to praise their loyalist stance or convey some other message. Study of political implications and uses of Chinese paintings became a big area of research for me and my students in 1970s. I held a seminar on late Ming figure painting in which at least three of participants took on topics that would be their doctoral dissertations: Anne Burkus on Chen Hongshou, Judy Andrews on Cui Cizhong, and Hiro Kobayashi on late Ming woodblock-printed collections of figure compositions..

-- S. This ptg was owned by C. C. Wang, and was one of a number of Chen Hongshou ptgs he showed to me and students when we visited him in his New York apartment. What he showed us were not by any means all genuine—Wang good connoisseur, but owned many ptgs of doubtful authenticity; one had to use sharp eyes in dealing with him. Anne Burkus was with us on that occasion; she was already passionately involved with Chen Hongshou and had strong opinions on pictures attrib. to him; she approved of this one as genuine work, that was a factor in my acquiring it, in trade w. Wang.

SS Hu Tsao.
Another from Contag collection. John Bransten and his wife Rena (?) gave it to the Museum—we looked around for donors at that time, to save/acquire some of the Contag ptgs while we could, and the Branstens were among those who helped us out. Later John became interested in Japanese Nanga ptrs, and I went around Tokyo dealers with him. Didn't turn out to be ongoing interest for him; he's more engaged with contemp. western art.
Hu Tsao was one of "eight masters of Nanjing," mid-17c artists working in that city after the establishment of the Qing or Manchu dynasty in 1644. Hu Tsao is the rarest of them; this ptg all the more important because of that. In some ways, resembles the work of the greatest of the Nanjing masters, Gong Xian. Composition based on strikingly angular forms. Tree foliage built up by heavy dotting dominates the picture; dark tones of ink, somber, powerful. Recluse living in dense forest of trees. Insc. written on mounting by two connoisseurs of time: Wu Hu-fan (teacher of C. C. Wang and Xu Bangda) and Chang Ts'ung-yü.

SS. Chen Guan. This also Contag collection; one of two I myself acquired (other was Fu Shan Ls--) I'm not clear on how it came into the UAM; bought by ? 1997? from Dorothy.? (Talk about it. In Late Ming exhib.) Dated 1638. Insc: "Cranes nesting in the pine trees everywhere;/People visiting the wicker gate are few." Was in our exhib. of late Ming ptg, The Restless Landcape, of which I'll say more later.

S. Dedication—birthday picture? Late Ming ptgs often based on poetic couplets in this way. I held a graduate seminar on poetic ptg in So. Song and late Ming China; also considered Japanese ptr Yosa Buson. I was preparing lectures to give at Harvard, later appeared as a book: The Lyric Journey. So, by the thinnest of threads, I've managed to arrive at another story abt UAM and me and my students.

SS Actually, two exhib. based on seminars that we planned, went quite a ways with, never quite realized. One was a great exhibition of 18th cent. Japanese poet-painter Yosa Buson, planned together with Maribeth Graybill, who was then teaching Japanese art history here; we gave joint seminar. It was going to present whole new way of looking at that great and enigmatic figure, Yosa Buson. Other, earlier, was exhib. showing relationships of paintings to pictorial woodblock prints, tentatively titled "Paintings Into Prints and Back Again." (This rep. kind of pairing we thought of: leaf from woodblock-printed "Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Ptg," Chinese, 1679, and ptg by Ikeno Taiga in Freer (unborrowable, but kind of thing . . . )

S – Ptg by Ikeno Taiga in style that grew out of his learning from Chinese prints, but has become independent, individual style, thoroughly Japanese, related to Rimpa. If I were including Japanese painting exhib., and acquisitions in this lecture I would speak glowingly of our friend and benefactor Bill Clark, who is here; his generosity in lending paintings from his collection, and giving us funds for student travel and other needs, as well as his hospitality toward all those who visit his center for the study of Japanese art near Hanford, has greatly enriched our Japanese painting program.

Curator for these exhibitions at UAM was Susan Teicholz, who had taken a graduate degree with me, and was at the UAM from 1980 to 1989 as Curator of Exhibitions. Couldn't be here today—away with husband in Sicily. I worked closely with her on a number of projects; she was wonderful support to me and students in a series of exhibitions, including the highly successful exhibition in 1981 of Anhui School ptgs, Shadows of Mt. Huang, of which I'll speak later. But she also did a lot of work on the two exhib. that never took place: the Buson show and the one titled "Ptgs Into Prints and Back Again." Hiro Kobayashi, now a professor at Jochi Daigaku or Sophia U. in Tokyo, later went ahead and did that ptgs-and-prints exhib. in Japan, at Machida Print Museum in Tokyo. Buson show just collapsed; but I used the essay on how Buson learned from Chinese ptg and became a great Japanese master in my book The Lyric Journey.

SS. Fan Qi. Gift from Dr. Roger Spang. Here I must speak of an arrangement that was entirely legal and proper, which allowed us to acquire a great many paintings we wouldn't otherwise have. Dif. in value of certain kinds of ptgs in Japan and here could be great: something you could buy for a few thousand dollars, get a quite honest appraisal of several times that from some New York appraiser; give to museum, get charitable deductions. Other museums were doing this too; I was in a good situation to do it, because I went around the Japanese dealers every year. Quite a few fine ptgs came to UAM through this arrangement; mostly lower-cost pictures, because multiples greater, but one wonderful Hôitsu ptg of poet Narihira on a seashore. Another doctor who did the same for us was Dr. Eugene Gaenslen. But first Roger Spang, who had real interest in ptgs, kept them for a while and enjoyed them before giving them to us. One of our benefactors. Fan Qi was another of Eight Masters of Nanjing, early Qing; higher technical training than others, LS closer to "academic" style. But fine. Found in Japan, recommended to Roger, who bought it

SS. Another Fan Qi, small, lovely picture on paper, with just his seal on it; evening scene, upper storey of large house rises above grove of trees.
There was a time when efforts were being made, under Jackie Baas, to buy some of ptgs from my collection with lesser funds—Anon. Donor hadn't appeared yet to save the day. Sheila Keppel was working hard on this. Even non-rich people were doing their part in this effort; this one bought with funds from none other than Pat Berger and her husband Charlie Drucker. Can't emphasize enough how everybody involved in this effort was doing what he or she could—all to be rescued in the end by Anon. Donor, our biggest benefactor.

SS album leaf also given by Dr. Roger Spang, Minor ptg—anon. Yuan, 14c probably. Rep. virtuous hermit Xu Yu by a stream (won't tell story.) Subject of research by Scarlett Jang; another ptg with political meaning, used as small gift probably, to compare someone to this paragon of virtue. Pieces like this useful in modest exhibitions that filled gaps between major ones, such as series planned and carried out by Sheila Keppel in recent years. She's another who deserves a lot of credit for the popularity and success of the BAM's Asian art exhibition program.

SS. Ptg by another late Ming artist, Chen Huan, bought by UAM in 1967, so must have been one of Contag ptgs, bought with museum money? from where? Landscape in Manner of Wang Meng, dtd. 1605. Theme: two men, with servant, coming to visit hermit in very secluded valley. Was in Restless Landscape exhibition. That exhibition, held in 1971, was first big one that I and my students organized for UAM; as first of three financed by a Kress Foundation grant given us for this purpose. Peter Selz was director; the seminar members had their first publications in the substantial catalog, and several of them went on to careers in Asian art: Yoko Woodson as a curator of Japanese art in the Asian Art Museum in S.F.; Mae Anna Pang, my first Ph.D., went on to curatorship in National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia (she'll speak about that tomorrow); Elizabeth Fulder, after embarking on a teaching career at U. of Denver, gave up teaching to marry Marc Wilson, Director of Nelson Gallery, but also founded extremely successful design firm called Asiatica (you've seen their advertisements in New Yorker) based on her great design sense and good eye for old Japanese fabrics; Judy Whitbeck went on to be prof. in university teaching Ch. history (her major) and art,, and later curator of a Chinese garden in New York, Marsha Smith/Weidner/Haufler teaches at U. Kansas, now edits Archives of Asian Art, major figure in field;, Pat Berger—well, you know about Pat—after some early teaching she spent some years in museum work, organizing ground-breaking exhibitions, espec. of Tibetan and Mongolian art, came back to us as my replacement. These students wrote innovative essays for late Ming catalog, at a time when nothing much of this kind was out there to consult and draw on, setting late Ming ptg in context of late Ming intellectual history (Pat), social and economic history (Marsha), political history (Judy), etc. These were the beginnings of our collective efforts to work out ways to deal with these factors of outside circumstance and how they affected form ptgs took. I gave them free rein, but always insisted they had to keep one eye firmly on the ptgs, never wander from them. They received guidance also from other Chinese studies professors on campus: Fred Wakeman, David Keightley, Cyril Birch, later David Johnson, others. Methods for doing this were developed further in later seminars, espec. one that produced "Shadows of Mt. Huang," exhib. of Anhui-school ptg. (will speak of later). Another graduate seminar was on topographical painting, pictures of particular places, and one of students in it wrote paper on "Eight Views in Vicinity of Beijing" by early Ming artist Wang Fu. She then went on, to the amazement of all of us, to successfully persuade the Graduate Dean that she needed funding to go to Beijing to work on it more as a thesis by seeing the real places. That was the extraordinary Julia White, now our Senior Curator of Asian Art here, and one of organizers of this event.

SS. Zhao Zuo 1613, Late Ming master in Songjiang, closely assoc. w. Dong Qichang, altho more conservative artist. Two stories assoc. with this one. Visited HK every year, after Japan and Taiwan; besides seeing major collections and exhibitions, also went to see minor dealers. One was Lee Kwok-wing, minor collector and dealer who lived in a modest apartment, didn't advertise or promote himself as dealer, but who traveled into China regularly and bought there, from among the minor paintings available for purchase, works that were mostly small and high-quality—of those I bought quite a few, some of them now in the Museum. Every once in a while he would acquire a more substantial, larger painting, and this Zhao Zuo was one of them. Offered at relatively modest price; I showed slides of it to students, wondered how we could raise money to buy it.

Now comes another great story, and I have only to utter one word to call up happy memories in the minds of many of you: fumpon. (that's the response I anticipated) Japanese word (Chinese fenben) for sketch copies from older ptgs that the artist managed to view, and copied figure groups and other details for his own use; also sketches from nature or life, preliminary sketches to be turned into finished works, etc. These fumpon, some of them exquisite drawings, were saved and treasured in studios of traditional artists, eventually passed on to favored pupil. As this whole tradition of studio painting was coming to an end in the time I was visiting Japan regularly, large assemblages of them, rolls of loose pictures or stacks of albums, were being offered for sale at book fairs or by small dealers, especially in Kyoto. Served no purpose, Japanese collectors didn't want them, so they were cheap.
I would sometimes buy a roll or package of them for little gifts to friends, children, students. On one occasion in Kyoto I dropped by shop of my old friend Nakajima, a dealer on Shinmonzen, the shopping street in the Gion district of Kyoto, and he brought out five rolls of them. I said (etc.) Only roku-man-en, Y60,000, maybe $200 then. Shipped back, had piled on chair in my office; eventually someone came up with idea of sale, to raise money for the Museum. We would gather in the big living room of our house, with piles of newsprint paper and paste, and mount them and price them. getting them ready for the sale.

First sale held in old powerhouse, while that was still usable, using lots of standing corkboards; later, sales were held in one of galleries of museum. I had to be somewhere else on first day of powerhouse exhb.; got back late afternoon, one of students told me, in an awed voice: they're all sold, and we have over $2,000. So we rushed over to Museum to find some things to sell the next day, and I sent a message to Nakajima: find me more fumpon! (to his bewilderment) And this went on for years.

Anyway, this Zhao Zuo painting was bought in part with fumpon money, as I remember; but Dr. Marvin Gordon and his wife Pat stepped in when we were short and contributed what we needed. They, too, are among the people who were always generous.

SS. Fa Ruozhen. One of ptgs that I bought from the collector-dealer J. D. Chen, Chen Rendao, in Hong Kong, ca. 1960?. He was a dealer of much larger ambition than Lee Kwok-wing; lived in a mansion overlooking Deep Water Bay, handled major works by major artists, published an ambitious catalog, sold to great museums—and was closely tied to artist/dealer Chang Ta-ch'ien, owning and offering a number of Chang's forgeries of early painting. I bought a number of Ming-Qing ptgs from him.

SS. Fa Ruozhen was an early Qing scholar-official and artist who painted many rainy landscapes; I authored a study of his paintings and their political implications in relation to his own life and career, and gave it at symposium in Cleveland; but my friend and colleague the late Wai-kam Ho, a superb scholar in his way, never got around to editing the volume . . . still unpublished. Received great help from students in writing this, reading and translating his inscriptions etc. Scarlett Jang, Ginger Hsu, maybe others.

SS. (detail, w. insc.) Fa Ruozhen painted two long scrolls of this kind, each for one of his sons; other one is in Palace Museum in Beijing. I learned this from a Mr. Fa who is one of his descendants, and wrote me about it.
Fa Ruozhen spent his later years serving as an official in Anhui Province; not classed as an Anhui ptr—came from Northeast, Shandong. But this gives me excuse to bring in two ptgs not in exhib., upstairs, to speak briefly about the Anhui School exhibition.

SS. Cheng Sui, Hongren. These are not in the show upstairs; but I couldn't not talk about our other highly successful exhibition-seminar, leading to the Anhui School exhibition, "Shadows of Mt. Huang," held in 1981, in which these were two of the stars (Hongren, Cheng Sui.) Again, carried out with eight specialist grad students, again with a trip to the East Coast to see and choose ptgs there—another long, great story I won't tell. Students paired to write four catalog essays: Ginger Hsu and another wrote on Anhui merchant culture and patronage; Hiro Kobayashi was back to write, with another, on Anhui printing; Judy Andrews wrote, with another, on "Theoretical Foundations of the Anhui School,; and Jane Debevoise and Scarlett Jang on "Topography and the Anhui School"—that is, how the ptgs depicted the real Mt. Huang. This was in 1981, when none of us had been to Huangshan; I went shortly afterwards, and in 1984, the first international symposium on Chinese painting to be held in China was devoted to this school, held in Hefei, the capital of Anhui Province, (with a trip to Huangshan afterwards). This symposium was inspired, as we learned, by copies of our catalog carried there by a colleague, Joe McDermott, who went there to do research, carrying copies of our catalog to give to local people, who were deeply impressed to see foreigners doing an exhibition of their school of artists.
Scarlett went on to teach at Williams College; Jane Debevoise initially left art history for a business career, but after some years of that came back to co-curate a big Chinese art exhibition for the Guggenheim in New York, became for a time a Vice-Director of that institution. And so forth. Judy Andrews teaches at Ohio State Univ., one of leaders in field, most of you know her work.

SS. Dai Jin. Another story. A major work by this major Ming master: how could it fall into my hands? (Story). Sotheby's Estate Sale, downstairs. A former student, Arnold Chang, was working there then, in charge of Ch. ptgs. Visited, with one of my students, and after seeing "respectable" things upstairs, we went down; a two-fold screen caught my eye: two Chinese silk paintings had been glued (animal glue) onto muslin, large strips of brocade sewn across bottom to prevent damage from people kicking it. I bought it for very little, Arnold shipped this ptg to me in mailing tube, after reading seal and realizing the ptg was probably by the geat Zhe-school master Dai Jin. (other ptg put back in auction, nothing worth saving.)

S -- Seal in lower left matches perfectly one on ptg in Shanghai, as does style, elements of LS. Had remounted by late Meguro Kokakudo, in Tokyo; difficult job. Howard and Mary Ann Rogers picked up for me, had at their place in Kita-Kamakura, where I saw it for first time.
S – This is Shanghai Museum ptg, same seal, much smaller, on paper.

-- S. Detail of recluse in house among trees. Title: "Summer Trees Casting Shade," corresponds with title recorded as having been in col. of powerful prime minister Yen Song in late 15c. Cut at top to remove his seal? Maybe same ptg. How it went from hanging on wall of prime minister of China to standing as decorative picture glued to a piece of furniture in a New York apartment is a story that can probably never be put together.

SS. Finally, the Shitao album. Late work of this great master, painted in 1704 (he died in 1707), rather loose in style, somewhat odd in several leaves. But genuine, as we decided in Shitao seminar I was giving.

SS Leaves from great Huangshan album in Sumitomo collection, Kyoto, probably from 1680s. Our album not remotely the equal of that; Shitao was past his period of producing masterpieces like these, dry-brush drawing, careful composition.

SS. Two more leaves from BAM album. Artist was older, tired, pressured by economic need to produce too copiously, quality suffers (or so I argue in my Compelling Image book; I've been jumped on for making this argument by some of my colleagues, including Jonathan Hay, who wrote very fine book on Shitao. But I think it's true anyway.
We got this album in trade w. C. C. Wang. I had carried out several trades with him over the years. Eventually, Wang said I was only one who would do this with him —others got burned, realized it only later—one, a dealer, sued Wang, claiming he'd been given ptgs Wang knew were not as attributed. Lost the suit because the issues of authenticity were too complex for the judge and lawyers to understand, dealer's case thrown out of court.
I had acquired, for UAM, a ptg from a Japanese dealer with the signature of the Ming master Zhou Chen; I knew C. C. Wang wanted this badly. But I knew also that there was another version published, which looked better to me. So I had concluded that the one we bought was a copy. But didn't hesitate to give it in trade to Wang—there were no moral strictures involved in our trades: if he could give me something he knew was wrong, he would. Battle of wits, and eyes. So offered to give him ptg w. Zhou Chen sig. for this album. He agreed. But before deciding finally, I ran it through the Shitao seminar I was then giving---

S,S. Second of two Shitao seminars I gave during my years at Berkeley. First had Rick Vinograd in it, for one; he later published his seminar paper. Second in 1973—Arnold Chang was in it, I remember—we acquired this album in that year. Was able to use it as problem piece in my seminar: not top-class Shitao (unavailable, to us), but fine in its lesser way. Was it genuine? We decided it was, and we went ahead with the trade.

SS. Finally, let me close with another story I've told before, but it seems a good one to end my talk this afternoon.

While I was still at Freer, in early 60s, called to his shop by local dealer in Asian art and antiques to look at album leaves he'd acquired. This was time of a government embargo on things coming in from "Communist" or "Red" China, aimed at keeping foreign funds from getting to them: in order to import a Chinese object of art, you had to prove it had been outside China by 1950; otherwise it could be confiscated. Confiscated objects treated loosely, even irresponsibly—some given to Smithsonian anthropology dept. (which gave important ones to Freer), or in this case, somehow had been given to this dealer. He asked me... (etc.)

Shitao fund: used to help students in our program who needed help (paid for dental work for one, travel for others).

An odd story, but illustrates how closely our lives and our studies were intertwined, how much I myself learned over the years through teaching and working with Museum, how for the most part, although impoverished and small-time by East Coast standards, we were blessed with good fortune and good help from many friends. Lots of you here today belong to one of these groups or the other, and share my happy memories of those years, and feel very good, as I do, about having them recalled by bringing us all back together.

Thank you.

• < Prev
• Next >