Robert D. Mowry Appointed Alan J. Dworsky Curator of Chinese Art
Cambridge, MA – May 15, 2000 – Robert D. Mowry has recently been appointed the first Alan J. Dworsky Curator of Chinese Art at Harvard’s Arthur M. Sacker Museum. Mr. Dworsky and his wife Suzanne, generous friends and supporters of the Harvard University Art Museums, have provided this gift to establish an endowed fund, permanently supporting a curator of Chinese art.
"Robert Mowry is a leader in the field of Chinese art, renowned particularly for his knowledge of and eye for Chinese ceramics. His exhibitions, publications, and lectures have made fundamental contributions to our knowledge of Chinese ceramics as well as Chinese paintings, bronzes, jades, Buddhist sculptures, and Korean paintings and ceramics," said James Cuno, Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard University Art Museums. "We are deeply grateful for Alan Dworsky’s generous support of Bob and this position. Chinese art has enjoyed a long history in our museums; among our most important holdings are the Chinese bronzes, jades, and Buddhist sculptures from the 1943 bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop, which form the foundation of the Sackler’s collections. Bob is the perfect scholar to hold this new curatorship."
Alan J. Dworsky, who received his MBA from the Harvard Business School in 1966, has long been a friend of Harvard’s Art Museums, serving as a member of its Collection Committee since 1997, and supporting the Art Museums as a Fogg Fellow for many years before that. Mr. Dworsky and his wife, Suzanne, have a long-standing interest in the visual arts from numerous cultures, periods, and genres; they have recently focused on Chinese art, which inspired them to endow this chair.
"With the importance of the Fogg’s collection of Chinese Art, Bob Mowry’s preeminence as a curator and scholar, and China’s place in the world—past, present, and future—Suzanne and I are gratified to be able to provide this endowment," said Mr. Dworsky. "It is exciting to be able to support the study of the history and culture of Chinese art at the Art Museums. With this curatorship, Harvard consistently demonstrates a commitment to using its scholars to further a mission of teaching and research in this century and beyond."
A resident of Cambridge since 1952, Mr. Dworsky began his professional life as an architect, including three years with The Architects Collaborative, the well-known Cambridge architectural firm. After completing an MBA at the Harvard Business School, Mr. Dworsky worked for 17 years at Putnam Management Company, the Boston investment firm. In 1984 he founded Mt. Auburn Management, where he and his wife, Suzanne, manage endowments of colleges, museums, and not-for-profit foundations, as well as the retirement funds of for-profit corporations.
Robert D. Mowry first came to Harvard in 1977 as the Fogg’s Assistant Curator of Oriental Art ("Oriental Art" being the name by which both the field and the Fogg’s Asian department were known at that time). He did his graduate work at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, with Chu-tsing Li and Laurence Sickman, specializing in Chinese painting of the Song (960-1279) and Yuan (1279-1368) dynasties, after which he spent two years working as a curatorial assistant and translator in the Department of Painting and Calligraphy at the National Palace Museum, Taipei (1975-1977). He served as the founding Curator of the Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection at New York’s Asia Society (1980-1986). In 1986, he returned to the Harvard University Art Museums as Associate Curator of Asian Art; he was appointed Curator of Chinese Art and head of the Asian department in 1992, following John Rosenfield’s 1991 retirement.
His two years (1967-1969) as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer in the Republic of Korea—where he taught English at Seoul National University—sparked his interest in Asian art and culture. Robert Mowry has published widely in the field of Chinese art; he is the author of the Handbook of the Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection (The Asia Society, 1981) and of China’s Renaissance in Bronze: The Robert H. Clague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes, 1100-1900 (Phoenix Art Museum, 1993); he is most recently author of Worlds Within Worlds: The Richard Rosenblum Collection of Chinese Scholars' Rocks (Harvard University Art Museums, 1997), the catalogue of an exhibition that he organized and that toured nationally and internationally.
His best-known work—which is read as widely in Asia as it is in the U.S. and Europe—is Hare’s Fur, Tortoiseshell, and Partridge Feathers: Chinese Brown- and Black-Glazed Ceramics, 400-1400 (Harvard University Art Museums, 1996), the scholarly catalogue of a much-celebrated, groundbreaking exhibition that he organized. Robert Mowry, who also serves as Senior Lecturer on Chinese and Korean Art in Harvard’s Department of the History of Art and Architecture, is a long-standing member of the Gallery Advisory Committee at China Institute Gallery, China Institute in America, New York. Supported by grants from the Asian Cultural Council, New York, and the Bressler Foundation, Seattle, his current research focuses on the architecture of ancient Chinese kilns—particularly those of the Tang (618-907) and Song dynasties—and the impact of changes in that architecture on the ceramics fired within.
Containing over 18,700 works of art, the Department of Asian Art at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum is unquestionably one of the largest and most diverse curatorial departments in the Harvard University Art Museums. Reflecting fully one hundred years of growth and evolution, the Asian collection ranks among the most important in the West. Harvard’s collection of archaic Chinese jades is unrivaled outside of China. The ritual bronze vessels, ceremonial weapons, mirrors, and chariot fittings—combined with the numerous early stone and gilt-bronze sculptures and the famous clay bodhisattva sculpture and wall-painting fragments from the cave temples at Dunhuang—make the Sackler an invaluable resource for many of these materials. The Chinese paintings include approximately 30 masterworks. Harvard’s comprehensive holdings of Chinese ceramics boast recognized strengths in pottery from the Neolithic Liangzhu culture, in Jun and black-glazed stonewares from the Song, Jin (1115–1234), and Yuan dynasties, and in colorful enameled porcelains of the late Ming period (1368–1644). The Sackler’s collection of Korean art is the most comprehensive in the West and includes numerous examples of elegant Korean ceramics, Buddhist sculptures, and paintings. The Japanese collection is very strong in the areas of lacquer, woodblock prints, printed books, calligraphy, and certain types of paintings, and is preeminent in the field of surimono (private, luxury-edition woodblock prints). Other Asian-art highlights include one of the world’s best collections of Thai and other Southeast Asian illuminated manuscripts.
Harvard University Art Museums
The Harvard University Art Museums is one of the leading arts institutions
in the United States and the world. It is distinguished by the range and
depth of its collections and its groundbreaking exhibitions and original
research. For more than a century it has been the nation's premier training
ground for museum professionals and scholars, and is renowned for its
seminal and ongoing role in the development of the discipline of art history
in this country.
The three Harvard University Art Museums – the Fogg Art Museum, the Busch-Reisinger Museum, and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum – are all outstanding institutions in their respective fields. The Fogg also houses the Straus Center for Conservation, a leader in the research and development of scientific and technology-based analysis of art. The 150,000 objects in the Art Museums' collections range in date from ancient times to the present, and come from Europe, North America, North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. Each Museum also has an active program of special exhibitions that promotes new scholarship in its respective areas of focus.
As an integral component of the Harvard University community, the Art Museums serve as a resource for all students, adding a special dimension both to their specific areas of study and to their lives at and after Harvard. The Art Museums welcome members of the public to experience its collections and special exhibitions, as well as to enjoy its lectures, symposia, and other programs.
The collections are divided among ten curatorial areas (Ancient and Byzantine Art and Numismatics; Architecture and Design; Asian Art; Busch-Reisinger Museum; Drawings; Islamic and Later Indian Art; Modern and Contemporary Art; Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts; Prints; and Photographs) and are comprehensive and encyclopedic within their areas. Developed with an emphasis on their value for teaching and research, these holdings are unique in their breadth and quality, and are enhanced continually through gifts and acquisitions. Together, they comprise one of the finest university art collections in the world, with resources rivaling those of many major public museums.