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March Issue 2009
The University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Chapel Hill, NC, Features
Exhibition Honoring Asian Art Scholar Sherman Emery Lee
The Ackland Art Museum at The University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill is presenting the exhibit, Sage in the Bamboo Grove:
The Legacy of Sherman E. Lee, on view through Sept. 20, 2009.
The presentation features
a multi-gallery exhibition of treasures from the Museum's Asian
art collection. The exhibition is mounted in celebration of Sherman
Emery Lee, the renowned Asian art scholar and esteemed former
director of the Cleveland Museum of Art, whose contributions to
the Ackland and UNC-Chapel Hill helped the Museum to build what
is now the most significant collection of Asian art in North Carolina,
and one of the premier collections in the south. When Lee passed
away on July 9, 2008, the Ackland community was deeply saddened.
This exhibition celebrates the profound legacy he left both at
the Ackland and beyond.
Lee assisted the Ackland in three primary ways. As a connoisseur
and scholar, he advised Ackland directors and curators on Museum
purchases in the field of Asian art; he served as advisor to collectors
who then donated to the Ackland Collection; and Lee and his wife
Ruth gave generously through the years from their own collection.
Sage in the Bamboo Grove will feature a selection of works
drawn from these three areas, including screens, scrolls, sculpture,
and ceramics of major aesthetic quality. All are treasures in
the Ackland Collection.
Exhibition Curator Carol Gillham, who knew Lee for more than twenty-five
years, said, "The works chosen for this exhibition will,
I am sure, give abundant proof of Sherman Lee's invaluable support
of the Ackland in its quest to build a collection of Asian art
of great quality and historical value for the University."
Sage in the Bamboo Grove will fill two Ackland galleries.
The magnificent Birds and Flowers by Sesshu Toyo, Japan's
most renowned Zen Buddhist painter, and the screen Chang Kuo-lao
(tsugen Sennin) and Other Taoist Immortals will be on display
Upstairs at the Ackland. The remaining exhibition space will be
installed with scrolls, ceramics, and sculpture, including the
Indian sculpture Standing Vishnu from the Chola period,
a perennial favorite and one of the first pieces bought with Lee's
advice. The exhibition will show not only works given by the Lees
and purchased by the Museum on their advice, but many others that
were given by significant Ackland donors with whom Lee was instrumental
in developing important relationships.
Recognized as one of the outstanding scholars of his generation
in the field of Asian art, Lee had a long and distinguished career.
He served as Director and Curator of the Cleveland Museum of Art,
Associate Director of the Seattle Art Museum, Curator of Far Eastern
Art at the Detroit Institute of Art, and Professor of Art History
at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Lee's book, A
History of Far Eastern Art, was first published in 1965 and
had gone through five editions by 1994. It remains a standard
text in the field. The Emperor of Japan made Lee a member of the
Order of the Sacred Treasure. He also was a member of the French
Legion of Honor and received the North Star medal from the Swedish
government. Lee chose to live in Chapel Hill after retiring as
Director of the Cleveland museum in 1983. For many years, Lee
was an Adjunct Professor of Art History at both Carolina and Duke
University. He also served on the Ackland's National Advisory
Board and in 1992 was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University.
Timothy Riggs, Ackland curator of collections, emphasized the
role Lee played in advising the Ackland in the purchase of works
now included in the Museum's Asian art collection, calling Lee
the Ackland's unofficial curator of Asian art. Riggs said that
rarely would any piece be acquired without either being suggested
by or vetted by Lee. "The Asian collection as it exists today
is a monument to his scholarship," said Riggs.
"The Ackland could not be what it is today without the irreplaceable
friendship, support and connoisseurship of Sherman Lee,"
said Ackland Director Emily Kass.
The Ackland Art Museum will offer a number of related events in
conjunction with the exhibitions. Call for further details.
The Ackland Art Museum
is located on the historic campus of The University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill. As an academic unit of the university, the Ackland
serves broad local, state, and national constituencies. The Ackland
Collection consists of more than 15,000 works of art, featuring
significant collections of European masterworks, twentieth-century
and contemporary art, North Carolina's premier collections of
Asian art and works of art on paper (drawings, prints, and photographs),
as well as African art and North Carolina pottery and folk art.
For further information check our NC Institutional Gallery
listings, call the Museum at 919/966-5736 or visit (www.ackland.org).
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