Making “Chinese Art”: Knowledge and Authority in the Transpacific Progressive Era Kin-Yee Ian Shin Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2016 © 2016 Kin-Yee Ian Shin All rights reserved ABSTRACT -- Making “Chinese Art”: Knowledge and Authority in the Transpacific Progressive Era Kin-Yee Ian Shin This dissertation presents a cultural history of U.S.-China relations between 1876 and 1930 that analyzes the politics attending the formation of the category we call “Chinese art” in the United States today. Interest in the material and visual culture of China has influenced the development of American national identity and shaped perceptions of America’s place in the world since the colonial era. Turn-of-the-century anxieties about U.S.-China relations and geopolitics in the Pacific Ocean sparked new approaches to the collecting and study of Chinese art in the U.S. Proponents including Charles Freer, Langdon Warner, Frederick McCormick, and others championed the production of knowledge about Chinese art in the U.S. as a deterrent for a looming “civilizational clash.” Central to this flurry of activity were questions of epistemology and authority: among these approaches, whose conceptions and interpretations would prevail, and on what grounds? American collectors, dealers, and curators grappled with these questions by engaging not only with each other—oftentimes contentiously—but also with their counterparts in Europe, China, and Japan. Together they developed and debated transnational forms of expertise within museums, world’s fairs, commercial galleries, print publications, and educational institutes. The collaboration and competition between them based on evolving definitions of rigor and objectivity produced two significant results. First, the creation of knowledge about Chinese art advanced informal imperialism over China through a more disciplined apprehension of its culture. Second, it facilitated the U.S. overtaking Europe as the new center for the collecting and study of Chinese art in the West. This project thus explains not only the evolution of a field of knowledge, but also the transformation of the United States into an international power at the intersection of geopolitics and culture in the first decades of the early twentieth century. Five chapters focus on the period during 1900 and 1920 when interest in and institution building around Chinese art flourished in the United States. Chapter one offers a prelude to changes to come in the early 1900s by documenting the participation of late nineteenth-century American collectors, whose tastes concentrated on Chinese ceramics, in transatlantic circuits of collecting and scholarship that were then dominated by Europeans. Chapter two recounts the creation of the American Asiatic Institute and the life of its founder, Frederick McCormick, to highlight the geopolitical context that motivated Chinese art collecting in the U.S. during the 1910s. Chapter three examines the intersection between commerce and knowledge by showing how art dealers conveyed not only art objects, but also skills and information across the Pacific. Looking past the marquee names of famed dealers like Duveen Brothers and C.T. Loo reveals the exchanges and mutual dependency between Western and Chinese suppliers, clerks, and translators who were key to the formation of Chinese art collections and scholarship in the U.S. Chapter four traces the tension between cosmopolitanism and nationalism that, over the course of a decade, catapulted private and public collections in the U.S. over those in Europe in a kind of Chinese art “arms race.” As chapter five shows, however, American authority over Chinese art was far from secure. In particular, conflicts over the selection and display of Chinese paintings at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco underscore the contingent limitations of this authority. The epilogue presents the 1920s and 1930s as a turning point in the professionalization of Chinese art that foreclosed earlier ideas and practices as insufficiently rigorous—and, in the process, surrendered an older vision for art to reform international relations. TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments ii Dedication vi 1. Before “the ‘Reasoning and Scientific Era’”: Chinese Art, Knowledge 1 Production, and U.S.-China Relations Before 1900 2. “A repository and arsenal of information”: The American Asiatic Institute and 36 Reforming U.S.-China Relations at the Turn of the Twentieth Century 3. “Art and Rascality are truly bed-fellows!”: Chinese Art Dealers as 80 Commercial and Cultural Brokers, 1900–1920 4. A Chinese Art “Arms Race”?: Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism in Chinese 161 Art Collecting and Scholarship Between the United States and Europe, 1908– 1918 5. Picturing China: Contesting Chinese Painting and Sources of Intellectual 212 Authority at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition Epilogue 273 Bibliography 297 i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- Looking back on the process of conceptualizing, researching, and writing this dissertation, I am astounded both by the number of people who have helped to shape this project and by the magnitude of their generosity. It is my pleasure to acknowledge them here. First and foremost, I thank my advisor, Mae Ngai. I arrived at Columbia University in fall 2010 intending to specialize in Asian American history, and was promptly disabused of my very limited and simplistic ideas of identity. Numerous conversations with Mae helped to crystallize a new set of questions that knit together my interest in the histories of museums, U.S.-China relations, and the politics of culture, and that ultimately came to form the heart of this dissertation. Mae provided the long view at moments when I couldn’t see it, and buoyed me with her passion for the project when mine flagged. Most importantly, she consistently asked the questions to which my initial response was usually “I don’t know,” but which, after some research and thinking, always had the effect of making my arguments sharper, richer, and more ambitious. I feel lucky to count myself as a member of the growing “Maefia.” Additionally, I would like to thank the other four members of my dissertation defense committee for their invaluable insights: Casey Blake, Anne Higonnet, Eugenia Lean, and Jack Tchen. Many faculty members at Columbia and scholars at other institutions also provided crucial advice and encouragement along the way: Heidi Applegate, Betsy Blackmar, Katharine Burnett, Gordon Chang, Cassie Fennell, Caroline Frank, Zaixin Hong, Ken Jackson, Lisa Keller, Dorothy Ko, Kathleen McCarthy, Van Tran, and Cheng-hua Wang. Several undergraduate professors at Amherst College—Carol Clark, Frank Couvares, Karen Sánchez-Eppler, and Kevin ii Sweeney—were the first to instill in me a respect and love for the study of U.S. history and culture, and they continue to be my role models as teachers and scholars. Conducting research for this dissertation while simultaneously serving as a teaching assistant for three years was only possible thanks to the assistance of the staff at numerous archives and libraries in New York, Massachusetts, California, and Washington, D.C. From our first meeting at a 2012 symposium at the Frick Collection on the history of Chinese and Japanese art collecting, David Hogge has been an ardent supporter of this project, patiently pulling an endless stream of materials from the archives of the Freer Gallery of Art and serving as a sounding board for discoveries big and small. I am also grateful to Jim Moske at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Alison Moore at the California Historical Society; Sally Brazil and Julie Ludwig at the Frick Art Reference Library; Jeff Gunderson at the San Francisco Art Institute; Sanjeet Mann and Trisha Aurelio at the University of Redlands; Diane Bockrath at the Walters Art Museum; and Hoang Tran at PAFA. Portions of my travel were funded by a generous grant from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. I had the opportunity to present portions of this dissertation at many conferences and workshops over the past four years, and I would like to thank the participants and discussants of the various panels of which I was a part for providing valuable feedback on my research in progress. These individuals include: Eiichiro Azuma, Melissa Borja, Kornel Chang, John Cheng, Robert Hellyer, Stephanie Hinnershitz, Chris Jespersen, Heather Lee, Thomas Mullaney, Dael Norwood, Peter Perdue, Sarah Shurts, and Eric Tagliacozzo. At Columbia University the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the Department of History’s Brebner Travel Fund provided critical financial support to organize or to attend these gatherings. I am grateful for their generosity. iii My colleagues at Columbia astound me with their brilliance and their kindness. They have been my first and most constant source of questions and encouragement, and it has been my great fortune to train with them: Wes Alcenat, Kathleen Bachynski, Kyoungjin Bae, Chris Chang, Andre Deckrow, Clay Eaton, Masako Hattori, Maria John, Nick Juravich, Mookie Kideckel, Stephen Koeth, Chien Wen Kung, Nicole Longpre, Daniel Morales, Alli Powers, J.T. Roane, Noah Rosenblum, and Aurelie Roy. I feel I owe a special debt of gratitude to Jeffrey Wayno, who helped me grow not only as a historian, but more importantly as a friend. Pursuing a doctorate while living in New York City turned out to be a fantastic decision, not only because of the wealth of historical materials available in the city, but also, as it turns out, because of the circle of friends outside of the Ph.D. program who have helped to sustain me over the past six years. For their moral support, I wish to thank Chandler Bankole, Taamiti Bankole, Phil Blumenshine, Phil Chong, John Havard, Ryan Jackson, Patrick Kwan, Alex Levy, Bryan Lowder, Cam McDonald, Margaret Mo, Matthew Mo, Rowland Moseley, Jordan Stein, Tim Stewart-Winter, Morgan Tingley, and Ed Tulin.