Asian Art Books at The Met

As we celebrate the 150th Anniversary of The Met, we are also celebrating the great Met libraries and reviewing many of our great collections. This post will provide a glimpse into our Asian book collection that itself has a history of over one hundred years.

John C. Ferguson was an early collector, scholar, and art procurer for American museums. He purchased artworks in China for The Met between 1912 and 1914 and acquired some important ancient bronzes and paintings. In 1915, Ferguson purchased seventy-six Chinese language books, which was perhaps The Met's earliest purchase of Asian language materials. Ferguson also published a series of catalogues on Chinese art in the 1930s that include the above Noted Porcelains of Successive Dynasties, an illustrated catalogue of porcelains from the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties. This valuable resource on Chinese art was produced during the Republic of China era.

Over the course of The Met's history, its libraries have acquired an excellent collection of over one thousand eighteenth-to-nineteenth-century books on Japanese arms and armor through donations and purchases, many of which are now located in the Department of Arms and Armor library. The materials cover a wide range of subjects including catalogues of bows, arrows, swords, and sword guards; records on swordsmiths, warriors, and their signatures; and designs for metalwork and sword ornaments.

One unique holding of Watson Library is its collection of over fifteen hundred volumes of string-bound Chinese books. The books came to The Met in 1986 and are mainly seventeenth-to-nineteenth-century Qing dynasty publications on Chinese painting, calligraphy, bronze, and stone inscriptions. The collection also covers other aspects like pottery, jade, ink, and seals. Aside from the above 古玉圖攷 (Illustrated Interpretation of Ancient Jade), other examples are 佩文齋書畫譜 (Peiwen Studio Compendium of Calligraphy and Painting), an indispensable reference on Chinese painting published in 1708, and 方氏墨譜 (The Fang Family Compendium of Ink Cakes), which is one of the splendors of Ming Dynasty book production and illustration.

The Met's collection includes Japanese illustrated books held in the Department of Asian Art. The collection consists of over 650 woodblock printed books from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. Early donations include the Howard Mansfield collection, which was gifted to the Museum in 1936. Nearly four hundred books come from an important acquisition in 2013 of the Vershbow collection, known for its superb quality. Artists represented include Utamaro, Hokusai, and Hiroshige. The books cover a wide range of subjects including models and actors, landscapes and flowers, and social life and customs. The books are available on The Met's website and through the library's digital collections.

Watson's special collections also include some very interesting Japanese modern art books published in the early twentieth century. One example of such books is the above anthology of visual poetry by Hideo Saito, illustrated with linocuts by Mavo artist Tatsuo Okada. It is "one of only three Mavo books illustrated with original linocuts by Tatsuo Okada." Present also are the catalogues of the Nikwa Group (二科), an important artist group in the 1920s when yearly exhibitions were held that included artists from both Japan and Western countries. Some famous names like Matisse and Chagall were involved.

Watson's Asian research collection includes not only outstanding studies of East Asian art by prominent Western scholars, but also catalogues of important museum collections and exhibitions worldwide. Talking about just The Met, the Museum has produced numerous high-quality publications on Asian art over the years, such as Wen Fong's Beyond Representation above. It is a masterwork on eighth-to-fourteenth-century Chinese painting and calligraphy drawing on The Met's collection, and it is available online in our digital collections.

In 2003, Watson Chief Librarian Ken Soehner initiated the "Contemporary Catalogs Project." The project was designed to establish connections with art galleries across the world and solicit quality exhibition catalogues, and it has been a great success. It has brought in a large number of avant-garde artist catalogues as well as important gallery catalogues. Together with library acquisitions from special vendors like Timezone8, we have assembled one of the best collections on contemporary Chinese art. Researchers now have access to rich resources on important Chinese contemporary artists, from Cai Guoqiang to Zhang Xiaogang.

Since 2014, Watson has been actively collecting books on contemporary Japanese photography. We work with artists and leading publishers in this area to collect exhibition catalogues, monographs, and limited-edition photo books. Gifts and donations have also greatly enhanced our Asian photography collection. In 2015, the well-known Japanese photographer Eikoh Hosoe donated around thirty books of his important works to Watson Library. In the middle of 2016, we received a large donation of over one thousand books on contemporary Japanese and Chinese photography from Christopher Phillips.

Auction catalogues of art works in private ownership are an indispensable resource for art research. Watson's collection of auction catalogues covers not only sales from Sotheby's, Christie's, and other European auction houses, but also those from Chinese auction houses. In the past twenty years, we have acquired catalogues from China Guardian, Poly Auctions, and other auction houses in Asia. Watson Library is among the few libraries that have rich holdings of Chinese auction catalogues.

Over the course of The Met's 150-year history, its libraries have built our Asian art book collection into one of the most comprehensive of its kind. The extensive holdings cover early and rare materials, exhibition and sale catalogues, and other outstanding research material in all areas of Asian art.

For more in this series on the history of The Met's libraries, click here.