Sherman Lee (1918-2008) was a commanding figure in the world of American art museums, known for transforming the Cleveland Museum of Art from a small regional museum to major institution of international importance during his 1958-1983 tenure as its director. The exhibition Streams and Mountains Without End: Asian Art and the Legacy of Sherman E. Lee at the Cleveland Museum of Art, celebrates Lee’s quarter-century tenure as CMA’s director by spotlighting 50 key Asian art acquisitions made under his leadership.
The show’s title is taken from a Chinese scroll, dating from
1100-1150, which the museum acquired in 1953, when Lee was in his first
year as its curator of Asian art, then called “Oriental art.” As with
every object in the four-room exhibition, it is positively exquisite
and serves as an affirmation of Lee’s exacting eye. Filled as it is
with magnificent works, the exhibition provides a rosy view of Lee as
an exceptionally discerning museum director whose particular field of
expertise and passionate practice as a curator of Asian art helped to
put the Cleveland Museum of Art on the map.
But now that the museum is about to embark on a search for a new
director (following the recent announcement that current director
Timothy Rub is leaving in September to become director of the
Philadelphia Museum of Art), it’s worth considering the lasting impact
that Lee had on the museum for better and for worse.
While it could be rightly argued that Lee’s undisputed brilliance as
a collector and a Asian-art scholar turned CMA into international
player in the art-museum world, a case could also be made that the
narrow concentration of his passion came at a cost, one that may
forever leave conspicuous gaps in the museum’s permanent holdings. Most
notably, with a few exceptions, the museum did not acquire major works
of current art that were readily available during Lee’s directorship.
So, for example, unlike many other art museums in the U.S., CMA did not
buy large-scale seminal canvases by abstract expressionists or pop
artists while Lee was at the helm.
According to colleagues, Lee believed in waiting 20 years before
acquiring contemporary works. His successor, Evan H. Turner, said in a
1984 New York Times article that Lee’s policy was, “you wait
until the first flush of enthusiasm is over.” The problem is, unlike
the market for Asian art, 20 years is an eternity in the
contemporary-art market. By the time CMA was officially in the market
for major works from the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, many of the most
important pieces were firmly placed in other museum collections. And
those few works that did come up for sale carried astronomical price
tags.
Depending largely on the will and policies of its future directors,
the Cleveland Museum of Art may or may not develop a strong collection
of contemporary works produced during the time Lee was its director.
Either way, in more ways than one, his legacy as incomparable collector
of Asian art raises the stakes.
This article appears in Jul 22-28, 2009.