Saving China’s Art: The Heiress, the Diplomat and the ‘American Emperor’

The Renwen Society at China Institute and the Confucius Institute for Business at SUNY Global Center jointly present an illustrated lecture by Margaret Stocker on a book she is writing: "Saving China’s Art: The Heiress, the Diplomat and the ‘American Emperor’."

The Renwen Society at China Institute and the Confucius Institute for Business at SUNY Global Center jointly present an illustrated lecture on Saturday, Oct. 31 by Margaret Stocker, trustee of the India House Foundation, on a book she is writing: Saving China’s Art: The Heiress, the Diplomat and the ‘American Emperor.’ The heiress, philanthropist and suffragist was Dorothy Payne Whitney Straight, whose fortune flowed from the Standard Oil Company. The diplomat, Willard Straight, collected Indo-Tibetan and Chinese bronzes and wall hangings in Manchuria and Korea while a correspondent for the Associated Press during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5 and then through 1911 under the US State Department’s ‘Open Door to China’ policy. The ‘American Emperor’ is the title that the 13th Dalai Lama used to refer to Theodore Roosevelt.

The talk will feature the work of the Asiatic Institute, established by Dorothy and Willard Straight at India House, a private club in New York City they also founded. Ms. Stocker, formerly curator of the Collection at India House, has uncovered rare monographs published by the Asiatic Institute between 1913 and 1916 that reveal an international lobby to support Yuan Shikai and the newly established Republic of China and to save China’s cultural treasures and establish a museum in Peking. Her book will document the 1000 paintings, prints, ship models, and nautical artifacts exhibited in the ‘Old Cotton Exchange’ on Hanover Square in 1914, which document America’s expansion into the Pacific Basin in the nineteenth century.

This lecture is in English. Free, but advanced registration is requested.

Register here.