The Benjamin Altman Story: Collectors of Japanese Decorative Arts in New York at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

• In Event: 286. Collecting and Imagining "Asia": Collectors, Museums, and Scholarship

Abstract

The first Japanese works of art to enter the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art — mostly lacquers — were acquired in 1881 from Stephen Whitney Phoenix, and they were originally accommodated in what was then called the Department of Decorative Arts. When Japonisme reached the peak of its influence, Tiffany & Co.’s artistic director Edward C. Moore (1827–91), and Louis Comfort Tiffany’s associate, Samuel Colman (1832–1920) both became dedicated collectors of Japanese decorative arts, and patrons of the Museum. Only in 1915 was a separate Department of Far Eastern Art established, and by the 1930s important decorative art collections formed by American travelers, artists, and businessmen entered the museum, most prominently the Havemeyer collection in 1929. In this presentation, I will highlight the Japanese lacquer collection of Benjamin Altman (1840–1913), the founder of the B. Altman department store, to tell the story of the New York art market, the major players in the field of collecting Japanese decorative arts, and the development of the Met’s collection at the turn of the twentieth century. Simultaneously, I will compare the collecting strategies and patterns of the above mentioned American collectors with those of their European counterparts.

Author

• Monika Bincsik, The Metropolitan Museum of Art