New Acquisition
The Museum has acquired a rare album of fifty leaves from the twelfth century. This Southern Song album of Buddhist and Daoist Themes is a major purchase for the Chinese paintings collection.

Cleveland Museum of Art Announces Retirement of Curator of Chinese Art
The Museum announced the retirement of Dr. Ju-hsi Chou, curator of Chinese Art, ending his six-and-one-half-year curatorship with the institution. Dr. Chou,who retires on June 30, will remain available to the CMA as a consultant and will assist the Museum in finding a replacement. In addition, he will continue to work on the Museum’s catalogue of Chinese paintings currently underway.

Dr. Chou, 68, joined the Museum in January 1998 and was the first senior scholar to occupy the Chinese curatorial chair since the departure of Wai-kam Ho in 1983. He immediately took stewardship of one of the nation’s most outstanding collections of Chinese art, including paintings, sculpture and the smaller three-dimensional arts. During his tenure, Dr. Chou developed important exhibitions, completed major research projects and added exceptional art objects to the permanent collection.

Chou’s most important addition to the collection is his most recent acquisition, noted above. The acquisition of this album fulfilled a life quest of Dr. Chou. For nearly forty years he sought out the elusive album after first seeing it in a German folio as a graduate student at Princeton University. He was finally able to purchase the album for the CMA in March 2004, enriching and giving the Chinese painting collection a new level of prominence. Other important acquisitions by Dr. Chou include:

· Dec. 1999 – Herdboys and Oxen in Landscapes, Guo Min (1250–1285). Rare scroll paintings datable to the beginning of the Yuan dynasty, these are believed to be the only paintings by Guo Min in the United States.
· Sept. 2000 – Cleansing Medicinal Herbs in the Stream on a Spring Day, Yu Zhiding. This reverential portrayal of Chinese scholar-official Shi Shenyi was the first acquisition of a painting by this artist who portrayed many of the historic figures of his time.
· Dec. 2000 – Pair of Tomb Guardians (late 7th to early 8th century). These two major Tang-dynasty sculptures are believed to be the finest examples of sancai outside of China and were the CMA’s first acquisition of such a pair. Known as sancai ware, these ceramic sculptures were funerary furnishings in a royal tomb and feature bold splashes of color and an ample coverage of blue glaze.
· Dec. 2001 – Portrait of Hua Yan against Mountain Ranges and Waterfalls, Hua Yan (1682 – 1756) and Wei Shijie (late 17th and early 18th century). This unusual collaborative work is a youthful portrait of the great Chinese painter Hua Yan. This is the earliest known portrait of him and the first portrait of a Chinese artist to join the CMA’s collection.
· March 2003 – Ding from the Shang dynasty (12th to 11th century B.C.). A major addition to the collection, the Chinese ding is one of only a handful of such vessels that exist in collections around the world.
· Sept. 2003 – Bamboo: Spring and Autumn (Yuan Dynasty). The acquisition of these two ink paintings completes a series of the four seasons, two of which - Bamboo: Summer and Winter - the Museum had already purchased in 1982. With the reunion of these paintings, the Museum now offers a rare series of the four seasons dating back to the Yuan dynasty.
· Dec. 2003 – Frozen Landscape, Hung Hsien (b. 1933). This abstract painting mounted on a hanging scroll was donated to the Museum by Dr. Chou and his wife. In addition, Dr. Chou played an instrumental role in organizing the traveling exhibition, “Circles of Reflection: The Carter Collection of Chinese Bronze Mirrors,” in October, 2000. The exhibition centered on a gift of 103 Asian mirrors donated to the Museum, making the CMA’s holdings of this material now one of the finest groups outside East Asia. After leaving Cleveland, the exhibition traveled to the China Institute in New York and the Elvehjem Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Born in Shanghai, Dr. Chou attended primary schools there before moving with his family to Taiwan, where he completed his secondary education. After moving to the United States in the late 1956, he studied painting and received his bachelor’s degree in art at the University of Kentucky. He then went on to pursue graduate work in Chinese art and archaeology and was awarded his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees by Princeton University. During his career, Dr. Chou served in a variety of professorial positions with Oberlin College, Carnegie-Mellon University, Arizona State University, University of Chicago and the University of Hong Kong. While teaching, he remained a lively participant in the field of collecting, most notably as advisor to the Roy and Marilyn
Papp Collection in Phoenix and the Hong Kong Museum of Art. From 1985 to 1993, Dr. Chou collaborated with the Phoenix Art Museum on three significant exhibitions and catalogues from the Papp Collection, which were shown in the United States and Europe. He also worked on two major international traveling exhibitions of paintings, which were shown in Hong Kong.

Vishakha N. Desaid to Become President of Asia Society
Richard C. Holbrooke, Chairman of the Asia Society Board of Trustees, announced today that Vishakha N. Desai has been selected to be the Society’s sixth president. She succeeds Nicholas Platt who is retiring this summer after twelve years as president.Ambassador Holbrooke remarked, “We have chosen Vishakha Desai because she is the best possible leader for the next generation of the Asia Society. Asia has changed. The U.S. has changed. And certainly the importance of Asian Americans in our society has changed. Asia Society has changed as well. Dr. Desai’s appointment as president represents a series of exhilarating firsts. Through her thirteen years of personal and professional dedication to our organization, she brings an unprecedented understanding of arts and culture in the broader social, political, and economic context. Dr. Desai’s strengths and vision combined make her the ideal leader for this important and dynamic organization.”

Since 1990 when she was named the Director of the Galleries, Dr. Desai has had a distinguished career at Asia Society, where she assumed progressively major roles and responsibilities, her most recent being Senior Vice President and Director of the Museum and Cultural Programs. She has built an international reputation for introducing contemporary Asian art to a broad audience and using it to illuminate historical trends and their influence on the development of today’s societies. She has also been at the forefront of integrating Asian American issues into the Society’s public programs, which encompass a wide array of creative, social, political, and business topics.

Dr. Desai has been a critical leader at an institutional level in recent years. She played an instrumental role in the renovation of the Asia Society world headquarters in New York City. The new facilities, which opened in fall 2001, have sparked a fresh and contemporary vitality for the institution resulting in diversification and significant growth of audiences and funding sources.
John Thornton, head of the search committee and Asia Society trustee commented, “Vishakha Desai brings an extraordinary career and stature to this unique organization. No one is better qualified to succeed Nick Platt and lead the Asia Society. The trustees of the Society have offered their unanimous support for this exciting decision by the committee.”

Vishakha N. Desai received her B.A. from Bombay University and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. Recipient of numerous grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Indo-U.S. Subcommission on Education and Culture, and the American Institute of Indian Studies, Dr. Desai has published extensively on traditional Indian and contemporary Asian art. Her publications include catalogues of exhibitions she has organized, such as Gods, Guardians and Lovers: Temple Sculpture from North India A.D. 700-1200, and Life at Court: Art for India’s Rulers, 16th-19th Centuries, as well as articles articulating the need for the study of contemporary Asian art.

Dr. Desai has lectured extensively on traditional and contemporary Asian and Asian American art in the U.S., Asia and Europe, and has served as an advisor and juror for numerous international projects on contemporary art, including the 2003 Venice Biennale. She has also been a frequent speaker to business audiences on the role of culture in changing Asian societies. Prior to assuming her positions at the Asia Society, Dr. Desai was at The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston as a curator of Indian, Southeast Asian and Islamic art, as well as a head of public programs and academic affairs. She has also taught at the University of Massachusetts, Boston University and Columbia University.

Dr. Desai has served in a leadership capacity for many organizations. She currently sits on the boards of Citizens for NYC, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and LEAP (Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics), and the New York City Advisory Commission for Cultural Affairs. During 1998-99, she served as the President of the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD). She has also served on the Boards of the South Asian Council of the Association of Asian Studies, the College Art Association, ArtTable, and the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities.