Museum Orientalism:
East versus West in US American Museum Administration and Space, 1870-1910. Part Two
Logan Ward
Citation: Ward, Logan. “Museum Orientalism: East versus West in US American Museum Administration and Space, 1870-1910. Part One.” The Coalition of Master’s Scholars on Material Culture, October 7, 2021.
Abstract: Although museums that display from all over the world are commonplace in both Europe and North America, their histories are much more complicated than meets the average visitor’s eye. In fact, these “universal survey museums,” like the Louvre, the British Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, are based upon Roman traditions of displaying war trophies. As such, the original purpose of such museums was to attest to the greatness of the modern nation-state, and consequently construe the history of art as the history of the highest European civilizations. Thus, these museum’s histories of collecting and exhibiting the arts of, for example, Asia or Africa requires critical consideration. Inspired greatly by Saidian Orientalism, this article describes and interprets how “East versus West” thinking and scholarship incorporated two early US American museums, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The East-West division influenced how both of these museums came to organize their administrations between experts on art history and experts on “the Orient.” Furthermore, Orientalized juxtapositions, a feature of Hegelian art historical theory popular at the time, formulated how museums organized their exhibition spaces. By following the museum’s gallery program, visitors enacted the evolution of civilization from Orient to Occident, and envisioned the differences between Western and Eastern arts as high and low respectively. This article primarily considers two juxtapositions: Greco-Roman traditions versus Egyptian traditions, and European paintings versus Oriental (East Asian) decorative arts. Part two of this article continues with the history of Orientalism at the MFA and the MET in the 1890s and 1900s. During this time, the both museums solidified the East-West binary as a part of their administrational structure and exhibition layout. Furthermore, museum engagements with East Asia led to the development of another Orientalized binary: East Asian crafts versus Western paintings.
Figure 1: Map of the Metropolitan Museum of Art First Floor from, Guide to the Halls and Galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1894). The index labels the galleries as follows: 1. Hall of Modern Statuary, 2. Corridor of Wrought Iron and Bronzes, 3. Hall of Cypriot and Egyptian Antiquities, 4. Pavilion of Greek and Cypriot Terra Cottas, 5. Hall of Sarcophagi and Cypriot Statuary, 6. Pavilion of Egyptian Sculptural Casts, 7. Hall of Assyrian and Archaic Greek Sculptural Casts, 8. Hall of Greek Sculptural Casts (not yet open to the public), 9. Hall of Hellenistic Greek, Roman, and Renaissance Sculptural Casts (not yet open to the public), 10. Pavilion of Italian and German Renaissance Sculptural Casts (not yet open to the public), 11. Corridor of Ancient and Mediaeval Bronze Reproductions, 12. Hall of Willard Architectural Casts, 13. Hall of Willard Architectural Casts, 14. Pavilion of Carved Wood, and Greek and Roman Antiquities, 15. Hall of Ancient Pottery and Glass.
Keywords: Orientalism, Museum Studies, Decolonization, Universal Survey MuseumIntroduction
A History of Orientalism in the US American Museum
1890s
The MET’s 1894 gallery guide demonstrates how the museum organized the Orientalism to Occidentalism transition narrative into its space (Figure 1). The numerical gallery sequence begins with Assyrian, Egyptian, Phoenician and Archaic Greek materials (galleries 3-7), follows with Greco-Roman sculpture (galleries 8-9), and finishes with Renaissance European sculpture (gallery 10). The remaining galleries (galleries 13-15) mostly displayed Western materials. Through this taxonomy of space, the visitor enacted the evolution of civilization from Egypt to Europe. Egypt and the Middle East became the beginning of civilization, but Greece and Rome became progressors of civilization. Like Robinson’s MFA arrangement a decade before, the MET’s arrangement clearly follows the Hegelian evolution from symbolic cultures, contextually Oriental, to more realistically representational cultures, contextually Occidental. The first floor juxtaposed East and West as two worlds: Orient as the east side, Occident as the west side.
In 1896, the museum mourned the death of its Curator of Sculpture Isaac Hollister Hall (1837-1896).[1] Hall originally deciphered the inscriptions on the Cesnola collection’s Cypriot materials. The in memoriam reveals his ties to the American Oriental Society and the American College in Beirut. Hall’s interpretative approach emphasized Orientalized divisions. In the museum’s second handbook of the Cesnola collection, he distinguished Oriental and Greco-Roman “national idea[s].”[2] Hall edited False Gods; Or, the Idol Worship of the World (1881) in which the preface states that, “[the author] sincerely hopes that by [the book’s] perusal his readers will be led to an increased appreciation of the infinite superiority of Christianity to all other religions; and that they may find a deepened interest in the welfare of the heathen world.”[3]
During the 1890s, the MFA and the MET considered more seriously the “Far East,” or China, Japan, and Korea. Both museums began acquiring diverse materials of East Asian origin during the 1880s.[4] When they received large collections of ceramics in the 1890s, their need to properly arrange and incorporate expertise on these objects accelerated.
In 1895, a loan exhibition of Chinese porcelain from Charles A. Garland prompted the MET to publish a catalogue on Chinese ceramics. John Getz primarily compiled and summarized French and British texts on the topic, including historical records translated from Chinese.[5] He focused on tracing the aesthetic and technical progress of Chinese ceramics. He labeled the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) as the height of porcelain, and blamed recent events like the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864) for the recent “diminished excellence” of Chinese porcelain.[6] Getz’s interpretation primarily reduces the ceramics to their aesthetic and technical attributes. He only mentions tributary traditions and class distinctions as sidenotes to his discussion.[7]
The MET placed East Asian ceramics alongside Western decorative art in small galleries in the back of the second floor (Figure 2). Entering the floor, the visitor began in a large gallery of modern (Western) paintings or “old masters.” To reach the museum’s decorative arts, the visitor wound a path through either temporary exhibitions or musical instruments and Euro-American antiquities. The museum situated Chinese ceramics in a hallway connecting the two main programs of European paintings (gallery three), and to a small gallery in the northeast corner of the floor (gallery 17). Japanese art appeared in three galleries, one each for metalwork, ceramics, and “objects of Japanese art, etc.” Along with Western art forms typically created by women and working-class artists, East Asian art served as an ornament to the museum’s main program of Western fine art – relegated to an obscure space as a footnote to the history of art.
The 1890s at the MFA sprouted the longest scholarly lineage of Euro-American Orientalists of East Asia in museums. Predominantly, four men contributed to the MFA’s East Asian collection during the 1880s and 90s: William Sturgis Bigelow (1850-1926), Ernest Francisco Fenollosa (1853-1908), Edward Sylvester Morse (1838-1925), and Charles Goddard Weld (1857-1911). Morse connected the four together as the original Euro-American Orientalist of Japan from whom Bigelow, Fenollosa, and Weld learned. Bigelow and Weld primarily contributed to MFA’s collection, but Morse and Fenollosa played more active roles in shaping museum practice.
Figure 2: Map of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Second Floor from, Guide to the Halls and Galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1894). The index labels the galleries as follows: 1. Gallery of Paintings by Old Masters, 2. Gallery of Paintings, 3. Gallery of Chinese Porcelain, 4. Gallery of Drawings by Old Masters, Etching and Photographs, 5. Gallery of Paintings, 6. Marquand Gallery of Paintings by Old Masters of the Dutch and English Schools, 7. Gallery of Paintings, 8. Coles Gallery, 8a., 8b. Alcove of Water Color Paintings, 9. Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Gallery of Paintings, 10. Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Gallery of Paintings, 11. Gallery of Memorials of Washington, Franklin and Lafayette, 12. Gallery of Modern Paintings, 13. Gallery of Modern Paintings, 14. Gallery of Metallic Reproductions, 15. Gallery of the E. C. Moore Bequest, 16. Reserved Gallery of Temporary Exhibits, 17. Gallery of Chinese Porcelain, 18. Gallery of Objects of Japanese Art, etc. 19. Gallery of Old Laces, 20. Gallery of Japanese Bronzes and Pottery, 21. Gallery of Japanese Porcelain, 22. Gallery of Gold and Silver, Gems, Miniatures, Cylinders, Coins, etc. 23. Gallery of Fans and Textile Fabrics, 24. Gallery of European Porcelain, 25. Gallery of Oriental and European Ivories, 26. Gallery of Miscellaneous Objects, 27. Gallery of Musical Instruments, 28. Gallery of Musical Instruments, 29. Gallery of American Antiquities.
Originally a zoologist, Morse went to Japan in the 1870s to study brachiopods, and history credits him for bringing archaeology and anthropology to Japan.[8] Morse taught at Tokyo Imperial University and collected East Asian ceramics. His book Japanese Homes and their Surroundings (1885) became one of the first Euro-American texts about Japanese culture.[9] Morse donated much of his collection of ceramics to the MFA during the 1880s and 90s. The museum began listing him as “Keeper of Japanese Pottery” in 1891.[10]
Fenollosa directly followed in Morse’s footsteps. In 1878, Fenollosa quit the MFA’s School of Fine Arts, and went to teach at Tokyo Imperial University alongside Morse. He became interested in preserving traditional Japanese culture against the rapid Westernization of Japanese society amidst Meiji era (1868-1912) policies. During the 1880s and 90s, Fenollosa preached his aesthetic theories and funded exhibitions of traditional Japanese art, particularly painting and ukiyo-e, in the US.[11]
In 1890, the museum employed Fenollosa as Curator of the Japanese Department, a title that contrasts with those of other curators at the time. Robinson continued to serve as Curator of Classical Antiquities, and the museum employed Sylvester Rosa Koehler (1837-1900) as Curator of the Print Department. These titles imply distinct approaches between the management of Western and Eastern arts. While Robinson and Koehler’s titles emphasize materiality, Fenollosa’s emphasizes geography and culture. Contextually, Robinson’s curatorial duties encompassed a large area of the world, but based in a specific discipline – archaeology. Koehler’s curatorial duties were even more specific to prints and similar materials. Fenollosa on the other hand dedicated himself to all things Japanese, and contextually all things East Asian. Unlike Western art, the museum approached East Asian art through geocultural generality. The curator need not be trained in a relevant museum discipline, but merely someone with personal experience and affinity. Euro-American Orientalists as curators were self-made generalists of their focus areas, not academically disciplined scholars like the curators of Western arts.
Fenollosa’s interpretation of East Asian art compared to other Orientalist work was more positive, though not free of Orientalization. In 1892, he argued that Southern Song (1127-1279) painting was equivalent to Greco-Roman and Renaissance Italian art, and condemned the idea that Japanese art was only decorative.[12] However, he explicated his idea of an East Asian “soul,” that he believed had been lost, like Greco-Roman tradition, in modern art. According to Fenollosa, only living Japanese artists could recapture this “soul.” Fenollosa’s East Asian “soul” seems to be an inherent sense of beauty, nature, or purity carried from Southern Song to Japanese painting traditions.
On the surface Fenollosa is complimenting East Asian art, but Orientalized assumptions are embedded in his claim. He generalizes that there exists a universal, inherent trait among all East Asian artistic traditions. This trait is premodern, mystic, natural etc. overall highly aestheticized and antithetical to Western modern society. Some contemporary scholars refer to this sentiment as “antimodernism” rather than Orientalism, but “antimodernist Orientalism” is a more accurate description.[13] Although praiseful, Fenollosa interpreted “true” East Asia as everything other to the West and modernity. He diminished East Asian art to an apolitical, purely aesthetic, though not solely decorative, and generalized tradition, while emphasizing its modern deterioration from a greater, past civilization. Finally, Fenollosa’s emphasis on modern Japan’s role as caretaker of this “soul” indicates the beginning of Japanocentric bias in Euro-American museums.[14]
The addition of Fenollosa to the MFA’s staff fundamentally changed how the museum and Orientalism related to one another. The museum was no longer only an Orientalist resource, allowing Orientalists to access its collections for research. The museum now maintained positions and spaces specifically for Orientalists, who actively produced knowledge in the museum. The museum became an Orientalist institution.
1900s
Figure 3: Plan of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston First Floor from, “Back Matter,” Museum of Fine Art Bulletin 1, No. 3 (1903): 22.
In the 1900s, The MFA and MET continued to structure their layouts around the East-West binary. The right side of the MFA’s first floor begins the Egyptian and Assyrian sculptural casts (Figure 3). These objects take up one room before a sequence of galleries representing the progression from Greco-Roman to European Renaissance art. Like the MET earlier, the visitor enacted the civilizational evolution from Orient to Occident. Egyptian and Greek antiquities juxtaposed each other in parallel galleries. The MFA achieved Perkins and Robinson’s vision of the history of sculpture – the history of Western civilization as advancement from the Orient into European high culture.
At the MET, the visitor now entered from the east, but followed a sequence beginning with modern sculpture (Figure 4). Egyptian and Cypriot antiquities adorned the halls (galleries 13-15) leading into the museum’s main program. Sculptures began to the right in a small gallery displaying Egyptian and Persian casts, followed by Greco-Roman and European casts. Egypt and Persia became the ancient Orient overtaken by the progressive Occident – the standard museum narrative.
With the new century came both museums’ Departments of Egyptian Art. The MFA department formed in 1902, employing Albert Morton Lythgoe (1868-1934) as curator.[15] Lythgoe began training in Egyptology under Alfred Wiedemann (1856-1936) in Bonn, Germany after graduating from Harvard in 1897.[16] He became Harvard’s Egyptology teacher for a year in 1898 before excavating in Egypt under Harvard-trained George Andrew Reisner Jr. (1867-1942). His first report to the museum focused on his plans to reorganize the display, but ends with the following:
“It is a fact well-known to those living and working in Egypt that the systemic plundering of the tombs and cemeteries by the natives, which has gone on continuously since the middle of the last century, and the scattering broadcast of the antiquities by the travelers to whom they are sold, has resulted in such a depletion of the antiquities of the country that the time is not far distant when it will be practically an impossibility to hope to add to our collections to any considerable extent…” (emphasis added)[17]
Lythgoe Orientalizes modern Egyptians as thieves “plundering” the history of their own land and disparages the people who purchase from them, likely Westerns like Lythgoe. Apparently, Westerners excavating and exporting Egyptian materials to Western museums was acceptable, but Egyptians doing the same for their livelihood was not.
Figure 4: Map of the Metropolitan Museum of Art First Floor from, Guide to the Halls and Galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1904). The index labels the galleries as follows: 1. Hall of Modern Statuary, 2. Corridor of Modern Statuary, 3. Exhibition Room, 4. The Huntington Collection of Memorials of Washington, Franklin and Lafayette, 5. American Antiquities, 6. American Antiquities, 7. Modern Bronze Sculptures, 8. Etruscan and Greek Antiquities, 9. Corridor of Modern Statuary, 10. Mural Paintings from Boscoreale, 11. Exhibition Room, 12. Furniture Room, 13. Egyptian Antiquities, 14. Cypriot Antiquities, 15. Cypriot and Egyptian Antiquities, 16. Architectural Plaster Casts, 17. Architectural Plaster Casts, 18. Cypriot Antiquities, 19. Cypriot Antiquities, 20. Ancient, Mediaeval and Modern Glass, 21. Plaster Casts and Della Robbia Sculptures, 22. Plaster Casts of German and Flemish Renaissance Sculptures, 23. Plaster Casts of Italian Renaissance Sculptures, 24. Plaster Casts of French Mediaeval and Renaissance Sculptures, 25. Plaster Casts of Greco-Roman and Roman Sculpture, 26. Plaster Casts of Pergamene, Hellenistic and Hellenic Sculptures, 27. Plaster Casts of Parthenon and Attic Sculptures, 28. Skopas Sculptural Casts in Plaster and Herculaneum Reproductions of Bronze, 29. Plaster Casts of Olympian Sculptures, 30. Plaster Casts of Archaic Greek and Assyrian Sculptures, 31. Plaster Casts of Egyptian and Persian Sculptures, 32. Architectural Plaster Casts and Models.
Lythgoe moved to the MET in November, 1906, a month before the museum’s own Egyptian excavations began.[18] The announcement thanked the Egyptian government for its “liberality not to be found in other ancient lands,” allowing “foreign institutions” settlements to excavate and export ancient materials. Contextually, the “Egyptian government” refers to the administration under Khedive Abbas II Helmy Bey (1874-1944), heavily advised by British Consul-General Lord Cromer (Evelyn Barring, 1841-1917). British occupation of Egypt continued to reap benefits for Western museums. The following year, Lythgoe published several articles on the museum’s first Egyptian excavation.[19]
Both museums continued to display East Asian art on their second floors juxtaposed to European painting. The MFA’s “Japanese corridor” connected the high and low arts, displaying a variety of objects, including paintings (Figure 5). The decision to present East Asian paintings in the corridor rather than with the European schools implies that medium was secondary to “Orientalness.” The “Japanese room” positioned with the galleries of craft art similarly reflects the Orientalized “decorativeness,” or “lowliness,” of East Asian art. The museum placed materials of Persian, Gandharan, and Tibetan origins in these galleries as well.[20] “Japanese” was a misnomer for the galleries, as the museum consistently displayed Chinese and Korean objects there. Asia continued as a sidenote to the history of art, and Japan maintained the center.
The MFA’s Japanese department underwent drastic changes during the 1900s. The museum dismissed Fenollosa in 1895 due to his divorce and remarriage, and brought in American painter and Fenollosa’s former student Arthur Wesley Dow (1857-1922) as Keeper of Japanese Paintings and Prints.[21] In 1899, the museum replaced Dow with Walter Mason Cabot (1872-?), the museum’s Boston Atheneum representative James Elliot Cabot’s (1821-1903) nephew, as Curator of the Japanese Department.[22] Cabot resigned in 1902, and the museum replaced him with American painter Paul Chalfin (1874-1959) before renaming the department to “Department of Chinese and Japanese Art,” and retitling Chalfin’s position similarly in 1903.[23] This series of artists as curators reflects the trend of Orientalist expertise as affinity. Neither Dow nor Chalfin traveled to Asia, let alone Japan, nor did they study Japanese art as a career. Instead, both drew interest in Japanese art through Japonisme.[24] Unfortunately, no specific information about Cabot’s interests has been found.
Figure 5: Plan of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Second Floor from, “Back Matter,” Museum of Fine Art Bulletin 1, No. 3 (1903): 22.
Figure 6: Map of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Second Floor from, Guide to the Halls and Galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1904). The index labels the galleries as follows: 1. Oriental Collection, 2. Exhibition Gallery (not yet occupied), 3. Exhibition Gallery (not yet occupied, 4. The Heber R. Bishop Collection of Jade, 5. European Porcelain, 6. Collection of Chinese Porcelain, loaned by Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, 7. Japanese Lacquers and Bronzes, 8. Collection of Japanese Armor, 9. The Clarence Cary (loaned) Collection of Chinese Porcelain and Bronzes, 10. Exhibition Gallery (not yet occupied), 11. Gallery of Paintings: Dutch and Flemish Schools, 12. Gallery of Paintings: Dutch and Flemish Schools, 13. Gallery of Paintings, 14. Gallery of Paintings: Marquand Collection of Old Masters and Pictures of the Early English Schools, 15. Gallery of Paintings: Hearn Collection, 16. Gallery of Paintings, 17. Gallery of Paintings: Wolfe Collection, 18. Gallery of Paintings: Wolfe Collection, 19. Gallery of Paintings, 20. Gallery of Paintings, 21. Gallery of Paintings, 22. Drawings by Old Masters, 23. Collection of Iron and Bronze, 24. Metallic Reproductions, 25. Exhibition Gallery: Temporary Exhibition of Paintings, 26. Gallery of the E. C. Moore Bequest, 27. Gallery of Chinese Porcelain, 28. Arms and Armor, 29. Old Laces, 30. Japanese Porcelain and Objects of Art, 31. Chinese and Japanese Pottery and Porcelain, 32. Gallery of Gold and Silver, Gems, Miniatures, Cylinders, Coins, etc., 33. Embroideries and Fans, 34. Miscellaneous Objects of Art, 35. Musical Instruments, presented by Mrs. John Crosby Brown, 36. Musical Instruments, presented by Mrs. John Crosby Brown, 37. Musical Instruments, presented by Mrs. John Crosby Brown, 38. Musical Instruments, presented by Mrs. John Crosby Brown, 39. Musical Instruments, presented by Mrs. John Crosby Brown.
Morse and Fenollosa’s lineage continued beyond Dow. In 1904, the MFA brought in Okakura Kakuzō (Tenshin, 1863-1913), Fenollosa’s former assistant in Japan, founder of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, and avid activist for nihonga, as departmental adviser.[25] Although Japanese, Okakura espoused Orientalist and Japanese nationalist assumptions about Western versus Eastern and Japanese versus other Asian civilizations.[26] His book Ideals of the East with Special Reference to the Art of Japan (1903) theorized an “Asiatic consciousness,” that Japan “has the privilege to realize… [as] the real repository of the trust of Asiatic thought and culture.”[27] In an MFA article, he referenced “the Occidental world,” while arguing that “Japanese and Chinese art require to be interpreted from within like European art.”[28] In 1910, Okakura became full curator of the department.[29]
At the MET, what were once small galleries of decorative art became even more tangential as the second-floor program’s orientation switched from south to east (Figure 6). The balcony hallways situated the museum’s “Oriental collection” and European porcelain as parallels. In 1910, assistant curator of decorative arts Garret Chatfield Pier (1875-1943) interpreted that 17th-19th century Japanese textiles in gallery seven demonstrated how “the Oriental, working with wooden tools, has attained results which fairly equal, if they do not at times surpass, the work of his Western rival.”[30] As such, the museum pits West and East against one another, even when the two are not actually competing.
Conclusion
The MFA opened its new building in 1909 with a similar program as before.[31] The year after, the museum created an honorary curatorial position for Western art, further dividing administration between East and West.[32] Interestingly, the museum’s Western art section included Islamic arts.[33] Connecting the two museums, Edward Robinson transferred to the MET and became its third director by 1910.[34] Thereafter, the MET created its department of Far Eastern Art in 1915, curated by Dutch “connoisseur of Oriental ceramics,” Sigisburt Chrétien Bosch Reitz (1860-1938).[35] Durr Friedley (1888-1938) Curator of Decorative arts managed other Asian arts at the MET.[36]
Beyond the MFA and MET, representing the Orient became a key US American museum function. In 1896, the University of Chicago established the Haskell Oriental Museum with aid from the EEF.[37] By 1904, Charles Lang Freer (1854-1919) pledged funding to the federal government for a building to house his collection of American painting and Asian ceramics.[38] In 1914, Cleveland founded its art museum with specific plans to collect Oriental art in China and India.[39]
As Said quoted Benjamin Disraeli’s Tancred (1847), by the 20th century, the East was a museum career.[40] Orientalism was the spatial taxonomy and administrative structure of the MFA and MET. With Hegelian influence, the West was the history of art, reflective of the history of civilization. The East was the West’s genesis – since disappeared – or the West’s ornament – beautiful, but other to Western modernity. Orientalists in the museum were primarily aficionados, aside from archaeologists, holding Orientalized beliefs about the East. They and the museum envisioned the East and the West as separate, parallel, rivaled, juxtaposed worlds. Simultaneously, European imperial expansion in the Orient benefitted US American museums materially and epistemically. Thus, the museum became an Orientalist institution.
Endnotes
[1] Henry G. Marquand and Louis P. Di Cesnola, “Report of the Trustees for the Year: 1896,” Annual Report of the Trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, No. 27 (1896): 680-681.
[2] Isaac Hollister Hall, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Handbook No. 2: The Terracottas and Pottery of the Cesnola Collection of Cypriote Antiquities in Halls 4 and 15 (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1895), ii.
[3] Frank S. Dobbins, Sylvester Wells Williams, and Isaac Hall, “Preface,” in False Gods; Or, the Idol Worship of the World: A Complete History of Idolatrous Worship throughout the World, Ancient and Modern: Describing the Strange Beliefs, Practices, Superstitions, Temples, Idols, Shrines, Sacrifices, Domestic Peculiarities, Etc., Etc. Connected Therewith (Philadelphia: Hubbard Bros. Publishers, 1881), vi.
[4] Due to European and Euro-American ignorance, many objects that came in during this time labelled as Chinese or Japanese may have actually been of Korean or other Asian origins. It is an ongoing project in Europe and North America to re-evaluate and properly label such objects; The MET was bequeathed a large collection of Japanese ceramics from Stephen Whitney Phoenix (1839-1881) in 1881, and dedicated its north gallery of the large hall to Oriental porcelain when it opened. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Handbook No. 5: Oriental Porcelains in the North Gallery of the Large Hall (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1880).
[5] John Getz, The Metropolitan Museum of Art: A Handbook of a Collection of Chinese Porcelain Loaned by James A. Garland (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1895), 3-4.
[6] Getz, Handbook, 10, 16.
[7] Getz, Handbook, 6-7.
[8] Encyclopedia Britannica, “Edward Sylvester Morse, American Zoologist,” last modified on February 14, 2021, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edward-Sylvester-Morse.
[9] Edward Sylvester Morse, Japanese Homes and their Surroundings (New York: Harper, 1885).
[10] “Officers and Committees for 1892,” Annual Report for the Year (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) 16, (1891): 67.
[11] Ukiyo-e are Japanese woodblock prints of the early 19th century.
[12] Ernest Francisco Fenollosa, “The Significance of Oriental Art,” The Knight Errant 1, No. 3 (1892): 66-67, 69.
[13] For Western antimodernism and East Asian antiquities, see: Kyunghee Pyun, “Asian Art in the Eyes of American Collectors, 1880-1920: Antimodernism and Exotic Desire,” Journal of Contemporary Art Studies 15, No. 2 (2011): 245-282; Thomas W. Kim, “Being Modern: The Circulation of Oriental Objects,” American Quarterly 58, No. 2 (2006): 379-406.
[14] See: Logan Ward, “Colonial Connections: Interpreting and Representing Korea through Art and Material Culture at the Cleveland Museum of Art (1914-1945),” (Master’s Thesis, The Ohio State University, 2021).
[15] Samuel D. Warren, “Report of the Executive Committee,” Annual Report for the Year (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) 27, (1902): 17.
[16] Edward Robinson, “Report of the Director,” Annual Report for the Year (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) 27, (1902): 41.
[17] Albert M. Lythgoe, “Report of the Curator of the Egyptian Department,” Annual Report for the Year (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) 27, (1902): 96.
[18] “Department of Egyptian Art,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 1, No. 12 (1906): 149.
[19] See: The Egyptian Expedition reports I-III in The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 2, Nos. 4, 7, 10 (1907).
[20] See: “The Ceramic Room, Oriental Porcelains and Jades,” Museum of Fine Arts Bulletin 2, No. 2 (1904): 5-6; Francis G. Curtis, “Tibetan and Other Lamaist Paintings,” Museum of Fine Arts Bulletin 5, No. 24 (1907): 5-6; “Asiatic Pottery,” Museum of Fine Arts Bulletin 5, No. 26 (1907): 18; Langdon Warner, “Buddhist Paintings from Northern India or Tibet,” Museum of Fine Arts Bulletin 5, No. 28 (1907): 51-53; E. W. F. “The Gandara Sculptures,” Museum of Fine Arts Bulletin 5, No. 29 (1907): 59-61; Denman Waldo Ross, “Early Persian Pottery,” Museum of Fine Arts Bulletin 6, No. 34 (1908): 29-32.
[21] “Ernest Francisco Fenollosa (1853-1908): Orientalist and Art Critic,” Smithsonian: Freer-Sackler, last modified on February 29, 2016, https://asia.si.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Fenollosa-Ernest.pdf; William Endicott Jr. “Report of the Executive Committee,” Annual Report for the Year (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) 22, (1897): 7.
[22] William Endicott Jr., “Report of the Executive Committee,” Annual Report for the Year (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) 24, (1899): 7.
[23] Annual Report for the Year (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) 27, (1902): 17, 71.
[24] Japonisme was an aesthetic-artistic movement among European and Euro-American artists who inspired to imitate the visual language of Japanese visual and material culture, particularly of ukiyo-e, imported to the West from Japan in the latter 19th century; Dow studied Japanese prints under Fenollosa in the 1890s, see: “Arthur Wesley Dow,” Smithsonian American Art Museum, accessed on August 3, 2021, https://americanart.si.edu/artist/arthur-wesley-dow-1325; Chalfin seems to have similarly admired Japanese prints and Fenollosa’s aesthetic philosophy, see: Paul Chalfin, “Japanese Art in Boston,” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 8, No. 33 (1905): 220-222.
[25] Nihonga is a modern Japanese painting movement based in traditional Japanese painting techniques and visuality formed against Western painting movements in Japan. Fenollosa and Okakura were instrumental during the 1880s in promoting the genre; Edward Robinson, “Report of the Director of the Museum,” Annual Report for the Year (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) 29, (1904): 37.
[26] See: Stefan Tanaka, “Imaging History: Describing Belief in the Nation,” The Journal of Asian Studies 53, No. 1 (1994): 24-44.
[27] Kakuzō Okakura, The Ideals of the East with Special Reference to the Art of Japan, 2nd edition (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1905), 4-5.
[28] Kakuzō Okakura, “Japanese and Chinese Paintings in the Museum,” Museum of Fine Arts Bulletin 3, No. 1 (1905): 6.
[29] Gardiner Martin Lane, “Report of the President,” Annual Report for the Year (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) 35, (1910): 23.
[30] Garrett Chatfield Pier, “Rearrangement of the Oriental Collections,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 5, No. 6 (1910): 141.
[31] Handbook of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston (Boston: The Museum of Fine Arts, 1915), ii.
[32] Handbook of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, 417.
[33] Handbook of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, viii.
[34] See: Adrianna Slaughter, “Today in MET History: October 31,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, last modified on October 31, 2010, https://www.metmuseum.org/blogs/now-at-the-met/features/2010/today-in-met-history-october-31.
[35] Edward Robinson, “Department of Far Eastern Art,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 10, No. 7 (1915): 136.
[36] See: Joseph Breck, “The New Indian Galleries,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 13, No. 5 (1918): 104-106.
[37] “The Haskell Oriental Museum,” The University of Chicago Library, accessed on August 4, 2021, https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/collex/exhibits/discovery-collection-memory-oriental-institute-100/haskell-oriental-museum/.
[38] Linda Merrill, “The Washington Building,” in Thomas Lawton and Linda Merrill, Freer: A Legacy of Art (Washington D. C.: Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1993), 235.
[39] “The Cleveland Museum of Art,” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 1, No. 1 (1914): 1.
[40] Said, Orientalism, xiii.
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