Sage in the Bamboo Grove: The Legacy of Sherman E. Lee - Audio

Sage in the Bamboo Grove: The Legacy of Sherman E. Lee (February 28 - September 20, 2009) is a multi-gallery exhibition of treasures from the Ackland Art Museum's Asian art collection. The exhibition is mounted in celebration of Sherman Emery Lee, the renowned Asian art scholar and esteemed former director of the Cleveland Museum of Art, whose contributions to the Ackland and UNC-Chapel Hill helped the Museum to build what is now the most significant collection of Asian art in North Carolina, and one of the premier collections in the south. When Lee passed away on July 9, 2008, the Ackland community was deeply saddened. This exhibition celebrates the profound legacy he left both at the Ackland and beyond.
Lee assisted the Ackland in three primary ways. As a connoisseur and scholar, he advised Ackland directors and curators on Museum purchases in the field of Asian art; he served as advisor to collectors who then donated to the Ackland Collection; and Lee and his wife Ruth gave generously through the years from their own collection. Sage in the Bamboo Grove features a selection of works drawn from these three areas, including screens, scrolls, sculpture, and ceramics of major aesthetic quality. All are treasures in the Ackland Collection.
Exhibition Curator Carol Gillham, who knew Lee for more than twenty-five years, said, "The works chosen for this exhibition will, I am sure, give abundant proof of Sherman Lee's invaluable support of the Ackland in its quest to build a collection of Asian art of great quality and historical value for the University."
Sage in the Bamboo Grove fills two Ackland galleries. The magnificent Birds and Flowers by Sesshu Toyo, Japan's most renowned Zen Buddhist painter, and the screen Chang Kuo-lao (tsugen Sennin) and Other Taoist Immortals is on display Upstairs at the Ackland. The remaining exhibition space is installed with scrolls, ceramics, and sculpture, including the Indian sculpture Standing Vishnu from the Chola period, a perennial favorite and one of the first pieces bought with Lee's advice. The exhibition shows not only works given by the Lees and purchased by the Museum on their advice, but many others that were given by significant Ackland donors with whom Lee was instrumental in developing important relationships.
Recognized as one of the outstanding scholars of his generation in the field of Asian art, Lee had a long and distinguished career. He served as Director and Curator of the Cleveland Museum of Art, Associate Director of the Seattle Art Museum, Curator of Far Eastern Art at the Detroit Institute of Art, and Professor of Art History at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Lee’s book, A History of Far Eastern Art, was first published in 1965 and had gone through five editions by 1994. It remains a standard text in the field. The Emperor of Japan made Lee a member of the Order of the Sacred Treasure. He also was a member of the French Legion of Honor and received the North Star medal from the Swedish government. Lee chose to live in Chapel Hill after retiring as Director of the Cleveland museum in 1983. For many years, Lee was an Adjunct Professor of Art History at both Carolina and Duke University. He also served on the Ackland’s National Advisory Board and in 1992 was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University.
Timothy Riggs, Ackland curator of collections, emphasized the role Lee played in advising the Ackland in the purchase of works now included in the Museum’s Asian art collection, calling Lee the Ackland’s unofficial curator of Asian art. Riggs said that rarely would any piece be acquired without either being suggested by or vetted by Lee. "The Asian collection as it exists today is a monument to his scholarship," said Riggs.
"The Ackland could not be what it is today without the irreplaceable friendship, support and connoisseurship of Sherman Lee," said Ac