The China Collectors - Reviews
From The Economist
“The China Collectors” is a racy, panoramic read; a cultural adventure story with serious diplomatic implications. Should the American museums that have preserved these acquisitions from possible destruction during the years of civil strife in China be allowed to keep their collections intact? If China wants them back, what should be the terms.
Read the entire reviw TEXTLINK
From The Washington Post
"Like so much of the best nonfiction, “The China Collectors” is as entertaining as it is eye-opening. After reading it, you’ll never visit an Asian art exhibit again without shuddering at how much Sturm und Drang went into the creation of such peacefulness and serenity." (Michael Dirda)
Read the whole review: TEXTLINK
Read the interview with Meyer and Brysac in the New York Times Sinosphere blog: TEXTLINK
"New books and exhibitions and forthcoming auctions are revealing the obsessiveness, and sometimes outright misbehavior, of Asian art collectors. “The China Collectors: America’s Century-Long Hunt for Asian Art Treasures” (due next month from Palgrave Macmillan), by the journalists Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac, draws on archives that include reminiscences about looting. One American museum executive in China described feeling “black despair” out of guilt for hammering away carvings and peeling murals to take home to the United States. Still, he wrote to a patron in 1916, “We must have some frescoes in this country for study.” The book describes a range of items, from teacups to columns, that foreign diplomats, merchants, soldiers, archaeologists and explorers funneled to private collections and museums. Excerpts from memoirs and letters mention Asian rulers and religious leaders who were bribed or forced to sell, expeditions mired in mud and illness, stonecutters told what to lop off for export, and forgers who produced pieces meant to look like fragments of sculptures broken off walls. Foreign connoisseurs cast aspersions on the authenticity of one another’s finds. A few objects they took, including marble columns and bronze animal heads from the Old Summer Palace in Beijing, have been restituted in recent years."
— A Love for Vintage Dolls That Never Grows Old by Eve M. Kahn, New York Times, February 6, 2015.
Advance Praise
The China Collectors is a journey every bit as thrilling and surprising as the expeditions that fill its pages. From the story of America’s hunger for Asian antiquities, Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac have unearthed a tale that is rich with politics, culture, and adventure. It is not only the cinematic story of Boston Brahmins and Beijing Mandarins, dueling for China’s treasures, but also an epic drama about great powers, drawn together by mutual fascination and suspicion. — Evan Osnos, author of Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China.
The China Collectors is a treasure trove of indispensable information about North America's abiding fascination with the art, architecture, and archeology of China. It is essential reading for anyone, cognoscente and dilettante alike, with an interest in the history of the acquisition and exhibition of China's artistic heritage in the United States and Canada. — Victor H. Mair, professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania.
In this fascinating book, Karl Meyer and Shareen Brysac reveal the extraordinary stories behind the outstanding collections of Chinese art in American museums. From ships’ captains and pioneering explorers armed with pick-axes and guns as they braved bandits and frost-bite to pioneering collectors and dealers in the Peking antique markets of the 1920s and 1930s, the cast of characters is stunning. The questions of legitimacy and restitution are also dealt with sensitively. It is beautifully written treasure trove. — Frances Wood, author of The Silk Road .
This edifying page-turner is the crème de la crème of archeological adventuring. Combining a connoisseur’s vision of Chinese art with the narrative sweep of master story tellers Meyer and Brysac have produced the first comprehensive account of the controversial treasure hunt to pirate imperial artwork, exotic gems and ancient relics from China’s vanquished Imperial palaces and the ancient ruins of Buddhist cities. This vibrant tapestry is threaded with unique vignettes and a cast of passionate personalities-- who looted or salvaged, transported and traded the coveted historical treasures which now adorn the world’s top museums. — Audrey Ronning Topping, Author of China Mission: A Personal History from Imperial China to The People’s Republic.
Pre-publication Reviews
Historians Meyer and Brysac (Tournament of Shadows) track the provenance of the Chinese collections housed in U.S. museums in this impressively researched survey of the adventurers who acquired these treasures. Focusing on a “curious, catlike herd” of colorful collectors, the authors open with the Bostonians who blazed a trail to China at the turn of the 20th Century, such as the eccentric heiress Isabella Stewart Gardner and the China rooms of her eponymous museum. She was guided by Harvard’s Charles Eliot Norton, who “preached the gospel of good taste,” and his acolytes. Museum goers may be familiar with Charles Lang Freer or the Rockefellers’ legendary collection of Ming pieces, but it is the lesser-known characters such as Harvard’s Ernest Fenellosa and shady art dealer C.T. Loo who introduce a frisson of intrigue. Evidence indicates that museum curators were complicit in funneling Chinese art to the U.S. until WWII. Despite recent measures taken by the Chinese government to protect its antiquities, the sheer volume of historic sites has made looting impossible to monitor. With ancient treasures such as the Elgin Marbles in the news, the issue of whether Chinese relics should be returned home is a timely one. — Publisher’s Weekly.
Two journalists explore the allure of Asian art for museum directors, collectors, archaeologists and others. World Policy Journal editor Meyer and documentary producer Brysac have collaborated before (Kingmakers: The Invention of the Middle East, 2008, etc.). Here, they shift their focus to the Far East to pursue a story they stumbled across in the archives at Harvard University. Their discovery of some key letters propelled them into a scholar's adventure—visits to libraries, museums, archives and relevant sites—and the result is a well-organized, if sometimes-dense, description of a passion shared by some fascinating figures throughout the past century. Some of the names are well-known (J. Pierpont Morgan, Joseph Alsop and Avery Brundage, for example), but others will be familiar only to art historians—e.g., Laurence Sickman, Denman Ross, Charles Lang Freer, George Crofts and Alan Priest. The authors float along on a fairly steady chronological stream, although they sometimes pause for some back story and context (we learn about the Manchus' sumptuary laws, for example). They also consider the moral and ethical aspects of the removing-art-from-China enterprise. (Lord Elgin emerges as a touchstone.) It's the old debate: Is it better to remove treasures from an unstable society and deny them to looters or leave them to face an uncertain, and probably dire, fate? Some of the authors' collectors embraced the latter position, but most did not. The authors also explore various varieties of art—bronze works, sculpture, porcelain and paintings. We learn some personal tidbits about some of the principals, as well. Sickman (of Harvard's Fogg Museum) collected first editions of Charles Dickens' works; Lucy Calhoun, wife of William James Calhoun (envoy to China), was the sister of Poetry Magazine's Harriet Monroe. — Kirkus.
China possesses more than 350,000 historic sites, including tombs, palaces, and temples dating from 3500 BCE to 1911. Throughout the twentieth century, an interconnected network of American curators, museums, entrepreneurs, and adventurers succeeded in transferring vast quantities of this cultural wealth from East to West, building the world’s greatest collection of Chinese art outside China itself. Journalists Meyer and Brysac offer a rich survey of the ways these artifacts were both acquired and exploited by such individuals as Charles Freer, Arthur Sackler, and John D. Rockefeller, collectors aided by political maneuverings of both the Chinese and American governments. The authors also delve into the little- known accounts of maverick curators who braved great peril to hunt down Asian antiquities, including Harvard archaeologist, and inspiration for Indiana Jones, Langdon Warner. Part true-life treasure hunt, part institutional critique, Meyer and Brysac’s narrative raises significant questions about the line between looting and preservation, and American responsibilities toward the repatriation of objects, while also weaving a fascinating history of art as a focal point for complex global relations. — Lindsay Bosch, Booklist.
Meyer and Brysac (coauthors, Kingmakers: The Invention of the Modern Middle East; Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Asia) reunite to present a thorough survey of the key players responsible for shaping many of America's most comprehensive collections of Chinese art. Taking a thematic rather than chronological approach, the authors trace the history of Chinese art acquisition by outlining the major collecting activities of familiar philanthropists as well as those whose names are less well known to the general reader. Along with these character studies are descriptions of historical events and technological advances that allowed for the dramatic increase in accrual of ancient Chinese art by Western institutions. The narrative moves among historical eras and locations, revisiting certain events multiple times in order to maintain focus on particular individuals. Those interested in a discussion of the challenges of verifying provenance and navigating the regulations for collecting Chinese antiquities may be interested in another recently published volume, Jason Steuber's Collectors, Collections, and Collecting the Arts of China. — Library Journal.