By Kate Kellogg
News and Information Services
The University will receive the country’s largest photo and library archive of Southeast Asian art as a gift from the Southeast Asian Art Foundation in Hill, N.H.
The U-M will acquire the gift over a two-year period, as stipulated by the foundation’s director, John A. Thierry. In addition to approximately 100,000 slides and photographs, the collection includes books and sculpture.
At the U-M, the photographs and slides will reside in the slide and photograph collection of the Department of History of Art. Books will go principally to the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library. The major sculpture pieces—from Thierry’s own private collection—will be displayed in the Museum of Art, and the minor pieces at various sites around the University.
Currently housed in Thierry’s remodeled 18th-century barn, materials in the archive cover the third through the 19th centuries of Southeast Asian art. Scholars from throughout the country have traveled to New Hampshire to use these materials.
“This collection will significantly increase our profile as a research center for Southeast Asian art and add depth to our offerings in the history and anthropology of Southeast Asia,” says Victor B. Lieberman, professor of history and former director of the Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies. “I hope the gift will attract promising graduate students, as well as facilitate undergraduate study.”
The slides and photographs, mostly of sculptures and architecture, will be easily accessible and updatable, as stipulated by Thierry. All will be filed at the History of Art Library in acid-free binders with plastic sleeves, along with information about the photo.
“We will continue John Thierry’s cataloging system with extensive photographic documentation of individual pieces of sculpture,” says Wendy Holden, curator in the history of art department. “The system has incredible advantages for researchers, who no longer need run around three different U-M libraries for information about slides and photos. They will be able to open just one binder and compare different images from the same country.”
Such accessibility and adequate storage space are among the criteria Thierry used when selecting an institution to receive his foundation’s gift, he said. Other main criteria are “high usage by students and faculty and assurance that the collection would not become static but would be constantly updated and cataloged. the U-M met all these requirements.”
The Graduate Library will house the foundation’s books not already in the Library’s collection. Thierry will sell the duplicates and use the proceeds to create two funds that comprise still another component of the gift: one fund for purchasing books on Southeast Asian art for the Graduate Library and another to support further classification, documentation and updating of the slides and photographs.
Thierry is personally overseeing the move of the sculpture, dating from the eighth through the 18th centuries, to the Museum of Art. Although the museum already has examples of art from Indonesia, it lacks pieces from Cambodia and Thailand—the two areas represented in the 19 pieces of sculpture coming from Thierry’s collection.
“This gift perfectly fills a big gap in our holdings—a gap that would have cost the University a great deal to fill,” says Marshall P.S. Wu, the museum’s curator of Asian art.
“This promised acquisition is an important step in the University’s creation of a permanent and comprehensive research facility for the study of Southeast Asian art at Ann Arbor,” Wu adds.
During the two-year transfer period, the foundation will continue its acquisitions and other operations in coordination with the University, according to Thierry.
A graduate of Harvard University, the retired lawyer and business executive has spent a lifetime acquiring the foundation’s holdings through his contacts with scholars of Southeast Asian art and through purchases from private collections and dealers.
