Distinguished Alumni: Robert Mowry

In terms of the way my career evolved and took shape—i.e., as a museum curator and  “collection builder”—the most important thing I learned as a graduate student was how to look at and analyze works of art... not art-historical analysis in general but connoisseurship in particular. When I was in residence as a graduate student at KU (1971–1975) the art history department offered a seminar titled “Studies in Connoisseurship” every semester—i.e., one each in Asian

art and in Western art. Dr. Li required that all graduate students specializing in Chinese art (and we were just a small group then) take the Asian connoisseurship every semester. Those classes were held at the Nelson Gallery—since renamed the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art—where we would spend a full day each week. Nelson Gallery Director Laurence Sickman would typically meet with each of us individually for roughly half an hour each seminar-day morning, and then he would teach a two-hour session in the afternoon, relying solely on works from the museum collection and only occasionally resorting to slides and photographs for comparison. Those seminars gave me the basic understanding that allowed me to develop connoisseurship skills on my own.

I’d urge students always to be willing to consider a change in plans, to think carefully about options and alternatives when approaching a fork in the road. That is, one always needs a plan. At the same time, don’t be afraid to veer away from the plan and explore something else; you may find that the “something else” is more interesting and rewarding than the original plan.

The entire time that I was in graduate school, I assumed I would become a college professor, like Chu-tsing Li or Marilyn Stokstad. But the KU connoisseurship sessions with Laurence Sickman had intrigued me, and while at the Palace Museum in Taipei I became truly enthralled with works of art and wanted to have a career that would have me working with actual works of art every day. Thus, I was very excited when I was offered the assistant curatorial post in Asian art at the Fogg in 1977; I wasn’t yet sure that I truly wanted to be a curator, but I knew that if I didn’t like the work, I could leave the museum and apply for a teaching post. Happily, I loved—and still love—curatorial work, so I followed that deviation from the plan and became a museum curator rather than a college professor. So much depended upon chance; at the same time, so much also depended upon my willingness to explore something different. I’d encourage everyone to be curious and ready to explore something new and then to test it against the “known and safe.”

From a practical point of view, the politics of one’s institution and of one’s colleagues... how to deal with the politics, to successfully navigate through them, and to be honest with oneself while doing one’s work and making intellectual contributions as well as contributions to the lives of others (in the capacity of one’s work), whether through teaching, through mounting interesting museum exhibitions and other installations, leading tours, and such.

Apart from doing a good job, always being honest and fair, and trying to make serious contributions to the field, the biggest professional challenge for me was following in the footsteps of and trying to live up to my predecessors who headed the H/AM’s Department of Asian Art, from Langdon Warner and Benjamin Rowland to Max Loehr and John Rosenfield. I had no experience in collection building, but I unexpectedly was very successful in raising money, cultivating collectors and other donors, persuading collectors to give works of art, and, ultimately, in building collections. While it is hard work and is very demanding in terms of time and of all-out efforts, I seem to have a knack for it, even if I don’t particularly enjoy it. In the end, I was one of the H/AM curators most successful in acquiring works and building the museum collections, with roughly 1500 acquisitions to my credit.

While my single greatest professional achievement was in collection building, my greatest scholarly achievement was my exhibition and scholarly catalogue (from 1996) of Chinese brown- and black-glazed ceramics produced between 400 and 1400. Though published twenty-five years ago, the catalogue is still considered the standard reference in the field; in addition, I’m proud to note that it is used in China and, indeed, has been translated into Chinese. My other major scholarly achievement was bringing order to the previously rather chaotic field of Chinese scholars’ rocks, which I achieved through the publication of my catalogue Worlds Within Worlds: Chinese Scholars’ Rocks from the Richard Rosenblum Collection (1997).

The main thing that has changed in my field is the introduction of new research methodologies. I was trained in style, stylistic analysis, and connoisseurship, and that’s what I like to do (and do best), so I never switched to another methodology. After seeing many colleagues espouse deconstructionism or semiotics, I wondered what was “wrong” with me for adhering, like a dinosaur, to an older methodology. What I realized is that one doesn’t employ a particular methodology because it’s “the in methodology to use”; rather, one uses a particular methodology because it answers the questions to which one wants answers. If one is interested in determining the authenticity of an ancient work of art, for example, one employs, style, stylistic analysis, connoisseurship, and any archaeological evidence that might be available and pertain; in that context, employing semiotics wouldn’t help at all. So, be aware that there are many different research methodologies; choose the one or ones that will best answer your research questions.

The other thing that has changed over the past many decades is the broadening of areas within one’s own field that are open for study. For example, in spring 1974, Chu-tsing Li taught the first course on modern and contemporary Chinese art ever offered in the U.S. It was considered unusual at the time; now, such courses are not only widely offered but are considered the norm and are demanded by students if they are not regularly offered. Until a decade or so ago, no one in the West had even heard of contemporary Indian or Southeast Asian art; now those fields are all the rage, even if not yet widely taught in U.S. colleges and universities.