| In the early twentieth century, staff members at the new Cleveland Museum of Art worked to build a well-balanced, cosmopolitan collection of art objects and antiquities from global sources. While objects from Europe were certainly prized, this dissertation examines the unusual preoccupation of the museum's first director, Frederic Allen Whiting, and first Curator of Oriental Art, J. Arthur MacLean, with sourcing, acquiring, and placing on display the very best examples of art objects and antiquities from China, Japan, and Korea. I argue that these individuals were not motivated by Orientalist fervor to acquire fine examples of East Asian material culture; instead, by engaging in what I call sympathetic appropriation, objects from Asia were carefully displayed in Cleveland's new museum, where they might serve a broad educational function. These pieces retained their existent cultural cachet even after being placed on display in Cleveland's museum.;Following a historiographical discussion in the Introduction, my argument unfolds over five chapters and a Conclusion. In Chapter One I discuss the construction of the Cleveland Museum of Art vis-a-vis other large, urbane American museums, placing special emphasis upon the work of the museum's first Director and Curators to distinguish Cleveland's museum from peer institutions on the East Coast. Chapter Two focuses upon the impact of the American Arts and Crafts Movement on processes of collection at the museum. In Chapter Three I examine the motivations that inspired staff at the Cleveland Museum of Art to pay special attention to objects from East Asia. Chapter Four examines the museum's "Oriental Expedition" to Asia, led by the scholar-explorer Langdon Warner. In Chapter Five I discuss the perceived educational value of Asian art as displayed in Cleveland's museum.;An analysis of the processes of acquisition employed by staff members at the Cleveland Museum of Art adds complexity to the existent historiography on collecting and appropriation in American museums. Additionally, this dissertation's examination of the methods of acquisition of East Asian material culture at the Cleveland Museum of Art serves as an excellent case study for analyzing collecting practices at smaller regional American museums in the early twentieth century. |
