July/August 2008
Around the Quads
Treasures Rediscovered
Relief with Guardian Figure, Northern Wei Dynasty (386-534), datable to 533, from the Lotus Flower Cave at Longmen, limestone, 24 1/8 x 11 x 4 ½ inches A group of 22 little-known stone devotional objects and architectural fragments that collectively represent major developments in Chinese religion and mortuary culture, from the Han (206 BCE–220 CE) through the Tang (618–907) Dynasty, were displayed at the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach [’29, ’31L] Art Gallery in “Treasures Rediscovered: Chinese Stone Sculpture from the Sackler Collections at Columbia University.”
Lauded by The New York Times as “an eye-opening show” of works whose “quality is unexpectedly high,” it ran on campus March 26–June 21 and will travel to the John and Mabel Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Fla., the University of Michigan Museum of Art and the University of Virginia Art Museum. The objects in “Treasures Rediscovered” represent highlights of the Chinese stone sculptures that form part of the collections of East Asian and other non-Western art at the University established by Dr. Arthur M. Sackler (1913–87).
Head of a Disciple, Northern Qi Dynasty (550-577), provisionally attributed to the Middle Cave of the Xiantangshan site, limestone with traces of pigment, 17½ x 14¼ x 14 1/8 inches Maggie Nimkin, Courtesy Wallach Art GalleryLeopold Swergold ’62 and Eileen Hsiang-ling Hsu ’92 GS, ’96 GSAS, ’99 GSAS are co-curators of the exhibition. Since retiring from a career on Wall Street, Swergold has been engaged in a comprehensive independent study of the Sackler Collections under the guidance of Professor Robert E. Harrist Jr., chairman of the Department of Art History and Archaeology and a specialist in Chinese art. A collector of Chinese art for more than 20 years, Swergold is a trustee of the Freer and Sackler Galleries at the Smithsonian Institution.