From Van Braam To Freer

This dissertation examines the establishment and transformations of Chinese art collection in the United States.It begins with the first collector of Chinese art in the United States,van Braam,and ends with one of the greatest collector of Chinese art in the early twentieth century,Freer.This paper is divided into five chapters.The first chapter examines the’prehistory’ of Chinese art collection in the United States.The’prehistory’ referred to here encompasses both conceptual and practical aspects.In terms of conceptual aspect,early American collectors inherited a somewhat vague understanding of China from the European tradition;in terms of practical aspect,they inherited the European mode of collecting——cabinet of curiosities.In Chapter 2,the author illustrates the collecting patterns of two major players of the first generation of American Chinese art collectors,van Braam and Nathan Dunn.The collecting practices of these two collectors bear many similarities to the tradition of cabinet of curiositeis.As the first generation of Chinese art collectors in the United States,their collecting interests primarily emphasize the intellectual and exotic nature of their collections.The third chapter focuses on the first major shift in the history of Chinese art collection in the United States-the process by which Chinese objects,previously regarded as art treasures,gradually lost their appeal to Americans and were reduced to ethnographic specimens.The discussion in this chapter is divided into two levels.The author first analyses several key elements that have given rise to this shift,then uses the creation and development of the Salem Maritime Society Museum as a case study to illustrate the different encounters of the same Chinese collection in the early and mid-to-late nineteenth century.Chapters four and five focus on the second major turn in the history of Chinese art collecting in the United States at the turn of the 19 th and20th centuries,when,under the influence of Japanese preference,Chinese objects moved away from their status as ethnographic specimens and re-emerged as art treasures in the eyes of American collectors.In these two chapters,the author presents the gradual formation of Japanese preference in the second half of the 19 th century and its influence on Chinese art collecting through two levels of discourse.