Smithsonian
Gets Japanese Print Collection
By CARL HARTMAN
Associated Press Writer
May 22, 2003, 7:25 PM EDT
WASHINGTON
-- A top American connoisseur has left the Smithsonian Institution his
collection of more than 4,000 Japanese color prints from the late 1800s and the
1900s, a surprise bequest worth millions of dollars.
It will take some months to prepare a public exhibition, museum officials said.
They only learned when Robert O. Muller's will was read that he intended to
give them his pictures, which dealers had tried hard to buy before his death.
"It came to us like bolt of lightning," said James Ulak, chief
curator of the Smithsonian's two galleries of Asian art. "We're still
unpacking. Our exhibition space is very much committed, but we're trying to do
some juggling."
Because the donor wanted his pictures to be appreciated as a whole, the Robert
O. Muller Collection will be kept separately in the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery.
Muller, of Newtown, Conn., died April 10 at 91. He had been collecting Japanese
prints since he was 20, and dealing in them for most of his life except during
World War II, when Japanese art was unpopular.
He had a gallery in New York, and later in New Haven, Conn.
"This is the benchmark collection for understanding so many of the amazing
things that happened to Japanese graphic art in the 20th century," said
Julian Raby, director of both the Sackler and the Freer Gallery of Art at the
Smithsonian.
Japanese prints of the 1700s and early 1800s inspired the Impressionist and
Post-Impressionist artists of both Europe and America, including Paul Cezanne
and James McNeill Whistler.
Copyright
© 2003, The Associated Press