Khmer Antiquities in U.S. Archives
During two research trips to the United States, three CO-OP interns, Ing Morokoth, Phuy Meychean, and Pim Fitzpayne, were able to collect a significant amount of primary material that serve as the evidentiary foundation for three individual case studies. They consulted five major institutions: the Rockefeller Archive Center; the Southeast Asian Art Foundation Archive at the University of Michigan; the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Thomas J. Watson Library; the Smithsonian Archives of American Art; and the Cleveland Museum of Art Archive. Across these institutions, they photographed more than one hundred folders of documents, including correspondence, administrative records, exhibition files, and acquisition materials. These sources contain critical information for reconstructing the histories and movements of Southeast Asian artworks.
In June, Morokoth and Meychean presented preliminary case studies at the International Conference on Recovery of Cultural Heritage in Nepal. This conference brought together leading scholars, curators, lawyers, and practitioners working in the areas of provenance research and heritage recovery through engaged conversations on current methodologies and global challenges related to provenance work. As an attendee, Pim reflected on the conference for the CO-OP blog.
Meychean says: “This engagement not only strengthened our approach but also reaffirmed the relevance of our research within ongoing international discussions on cultural heritage.”
The Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC) is located in Sleepy Hollow, New York. The center was established in 1974 by the Rockefeller family. It holds the family’s philanthropic work and the archive of a large collection of materials. It houses a wealth of documents from the Rockefeller Foundation, Asia Society, and related institutions providing a behind-the-scenes look at how art collections were curated and displayed. The centre holds crucial evidence of relationships between dealers, collectors and museums in the form of joint exhibition planning, loans, catalogues, and correspondence around the buying and selling of Khmer antiquities. Rockefeller’s papers reveal how collectors with strong institutional ties, including trustees and patrons of major museums, facilitated the acquisition and legitimization of Cambodian artifacts.
The RAC also houses the Asia Society Gallery records, which includes exhibition records, correspondence between curators and lenders, drafts of exhibition catalogues, and exhibition loan agreements. The 1969 exhibition of Ancient Cambodian Sculpture at the Asia Society forms the basis for Meychean’s case study. The 1994 ‘Buddha of the Future’ exhibition forms the basis for Pim’s case study.
Held between the Smithsonian Archives of American Art and the Cleveland Museum of Art Archive, the Sherman Lee papers detail Lee’s correspondence with dealers and collectors, correspondence regarding the running of the Cleveland Museum of Art, and correspondence about acquisitions. There are also records relating to acquisition trips made by Lee to Europe and Asia. Sherman Lee, director of the Cleveland Art Museum for 25 years (1958-1983), also served as advisor on collecting and the art market to John D. Rockefeller III. Thus, the Sherman Lee papers complement those correspondences also found in the Rockfeller Archive Center. This relationship, developing over the 1960s, is the subject of Morokoth’s case study.
The Southeast Asian Art Foundation (SAAF) Archive was established in 1977 in Hill, New Hampshire, and was transferred to Ann Arbor in 1993. It is a photographic archive, featuring visual materials by scholars and photographers and photographs from private collections, auction houses and dealers (major auction houses, e.g. Spink & Son; other (mostly New York) dealers, e.g. Doris Wiener, William Wolff). Comprised of approximately 100,000 photographs and slides, its Southeast Asian materials chronology Cambodian, Thai, Indonesian sculpture and architecture.
The Samuel Eilenberg papers are a collection of documents at the Columbia University Archives, where Eilenberg was faculty in the Mathematics Department for almost fifty years. Pertaining to Eilenberg’s collecting of Asian art, documents include personal correspondence: between Samuel Eilenberg and his wife Natasha, occasionally regarding their collection of Southeast Asian art (mostly Khmer and Indonesian); between Samuel Eilenberg and dealers; and legal correspondence regarding Samuel and Natasha Eilenberg’s divorce, including disputes around the division of their collection.
Case Study: John D. Rockefeller III and Sherman Lee
by Ing Morokoth
Case Study: 1969 'Ancient Cambodian Sculpture' Exhibition
by Phuy Meychean
Case Study: 1994 'Buddha of the Future' Exhibition
by Pim Fitzpayne