MET MUSEUM AND MINNEAPOLIS INSTITUTE OF ARTS RECEIVE GIFT OF ASIAN ART
William Grimes reports in the New York Times that the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts will each receive a gift of Asian art from the estate of Mary Griggs Burke, whose collection of Japanese and other East Asian art ranks among the top private collections in the world.
Burke grew up in St. Paul but spent most of her life in New York City and in 2006 she announced plans to leave about a thousand of the works she began collecting in the early 1960s to the two museums. She died in 2012.
The museums jointly announced that the Minneapolis museum would receive nearly seven hundred works, and the Metropolitan more than three hundred from a collection of Japanese, Korean, and Chinese artworks. Each museum will also receive a cash endowment of $12.5 million. The gift will help the Minneapolis Institute fill in the gaps of a collection strong in the Edo period, with particular regard to ukiyo-e paintings and prints.
Of the works earmarked for the Met are an early medieval sculpture of the Buddhist protective deity Fudo Myoo by the sculptor Kaikei, as well as Muromachi ink paintings and Edo-period works by the eighteenth-century painters Ito Jakuchu and Soga Shohaku.
“The Met aspires to show the best, world-class masterpieces, and this gift allows us to double our number of displayable objects,” said John T. Carpenter, the curator of Japanese art in the department of Asian art at the Met, who has also been given the new title of Mary Griggs Burke curator of Japanese Art.
The Met has also received three additional major gifts of art and funding from long-time donors and supporters in celebration of the centennial of the museum’s department of Asian art. These donations include nearly 1,300 Asian works of art from Florence and Herbert Irving; $15 million from Oscar L. Tang for new curatorial and conservation staff appointments and programming; and $4 million from Mary Wallach to endow a conservatorship of Japanese painting.
Thomas P. Campbell, the director and CEO of the Met, also announced the launch of a $70 million fundraising initiative to enhance the department’s staff, programs, collections, and facilities. Nearly half of that goal has been achieved now through the gifts from Oscar L. Tang, Mary Griggs Burke, and Mary Wallach.
