The world of Japanese art has lost one of the great collectors with the death of Mary Griggs Burke, age 96, at her home in New York City on December 8, 2012.
Mary Livingston Griggs was born in St. Paul, Minnesota on June 20, 1916. She grew up in a Victorian mansion filled with 18th-century French art, but was also exposed to a few Japanese pieces that her mother had acquired. She earned a bachelor’s degree in 1938 from Sarah Lawrence College, where she studied literature with Joseph Campbell and painting with Bradley Walker Tomlin, a member of the New York School of Abstract Expressionists.
Afterward, she earned a master’s in clinical psychology from Columbia. In 1954, she made her first trip to Japan. The visit had been suggested by the architect Walter Gropius, whose disciple Benjamin Thompson was designing a modernist house for her in Oyster Bay, on Long Island. Gropius was deeply influenced by the Japanese aesthetic and wanted her to experience its clean, spare lines firsthand. Entranced by Japan and its art, Mrs. Burke returned dozens of times over the decades, and with her husband, Jackson Burke, a printer and type designer whom she married in 1955, she began collecting Japanese art in earnest in 1963. Her collection is widely acknowledged as one of the finest outside of Japan, and spans five millenniums, from the art of early Japanese cultures around 3000 B.C. through that of the Edo period of the 17th to 19th centuries A.D. Assembled over half a century and exhibited throughout the world, Mrs. Burke’s collection comprises approximately a thousand artifacts, including paintings, prints, sculpture, textiles, lacquerware, ceramics and calligraphy. Some of her collection has been displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1975 and 2000), the Morikami Museum in Delray Beach, Florida, and the Asia Society in New York. In Japan in 1985 her treasures were displayed at the Tokyo National Museum, the first Western collection of Japanese art to be shown there. In 1987 she received the Order of the Sacred Treasure, an honor bestowed by the Japanese government for distinguished contributions to research, industry and other fields.
The collection grew so large that eventually it was housed in its own apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, adjacent to her living quarters, with its own curatorial staff. Students and scholars were encouraged to make an appointment and visit, and the Japanese Art Society of America scheduled a visit to the collection annually for many years. To members’ delight, her curatorial staff always managed to bring out items that had not been shown in previous visits. In addition, Mrs. Burke generously helped support JASA activities for many years.
In 2006 Mrs. Burke announced that on her death, her collection would be divided between the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and that process is now ongoing. In summer 2013, the two-volume catalog Art Through a Lifetime: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection will be published by the Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation. It will include color photos and information of the 1,000-plus items that make up her extraordinary collection.
In one of those lovely stories that all collectors enjoy (and can relate to), The New York Times reported: Of all the artistic traditions in the world, Mrs. Burke was often asked, Why was she so drawn to the Japanese? “It’s a deep neurotic need,” she replied, “better left unanalyzed.”
From all who love Japanese art, we express our desire: Requiescat in pace.