Lee, Sherman E. 1918–2008

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Lee, Sherman E. 1918–2008

(Sherman Emery Lee)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born April 19 (some sources cite April 9), 1918, in Seattle, WA; died July 9, 2008, in Chapel Hill, NC. Museologist, museum director, curator, educator, and author.

Lee's fascination with Asian art led to a long and fruitful career as a collector and museologist. After a few years as the curator of Far Eastern art at the Detroit Institute of Arts during World War II, Lee had the opportunity to work as a civilian in postwar Toyko, where he catalogued and preserved Japanese artworks. In 1952 he joined the Cleveland Museum of Art as a curator of Oriental art; by 1958 he had become the director of the museum. Aided by a substantial bequest from a local philanthropist, Lee embarked on a carefully executed journey to improve the institution's holdings of all types of art. By the time he retired in 1983, he had transformed the museum from a regional collection in the American Midwest into an international destination for art collectors and amateur enthusiasts as well. Lee's tenure at the museum was not beyond reproach. A milliondollar acquisition turned out to be a forgery, for which the museum was able to secure a refund, and a French painting acquired without an export license generated an international lawsuit, but the museum ultimately retained ownership of the work. These were relatively short-term crises during his long tenure. Because of the gifts that enabled his acquisitions, Lee was not forced into fund-raising ventures, such as spectacular exhibit installations or hasty acquisitions of trendy artwork, and he avoided both. He wanted a modern artwork to pass the test of time before he purchased it (at least twenty years beyond its debut), and he insisted on tasteful, even subdued, displays that prevented the art from being overshadowed by its setting. After retirement from the museum, Lee worked as a consultant to private collectors, including Willard G. Clark, who in 2000 named his California museum the Ruth and Sherman Lee Institute of Japanese Art. Lee also taught at Case Western Reserve University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Lee wrote several books on Asian art, including Japanese Decorative Style (1961), Chinese Art under the Mongols (1968), Ancient Cambodian Sculpture (1970), Past, Present, East and West (1983), and Masterworks of Ming and Qing Painting from the Forbidden City (1988).