Oriental Art Tops Gains

The greatest number of important accessions to the permanent collections of the University's Museum of Art for the past year were in Oriental Art, according to Director Charles H. Sawyer.

As a result of the History of Art Department’s Prof. Richard Edward’s exploration in the Japanese art market, several ancient Japanese paintings, screens and ceramics were acquired during the year.

Purchase acquisitions for the James Marshall Plumer Memorial Collection were completed during the year. In December, an exhibition and catalog of the collection were prepared by the Seminar in Museum Practice with the assistance of Mrs. Plumer, members of the History and Art faculty and museum staff.

“In Historic European Art, a painting, ‘Interior of a Guardroom’ by the 17th Century Flemish painter, David Teniers the Younger, and a pastel portrait by Francis Cotes, English, mid-18th Century, are of particular interest,” Sawyer says.

Acquisitions in contemporary art were concentrated primarily in drawings and mixed media. These included nine selections from the exhibition, “One Hundred Contemporary American Drawings.”