A History of Collecting of Asian Material Culture by the National Museum of Ireland, with a particular focus on the Albert Bender Collection
The Dublin Science and Art Museum, now the National Museum of Ireland (NMI), was founded in 1877 under the ‘Science and Art Museum Act’. Officials for the Museum began collecting based on the South Kensington model, which they were tied to administratively. Like other metropolitan centres of these islands, such as Edinburgh and Liverpool, policy dictated that the acquisition of the applied/industrial arts be internationally as well as nationally based. As a result many objects of non-Western provenance, in the National Museum of Ireland’s case, approximately 7,000 objects of Asian origin, were acquired.
Following Irish Independence in 1922, the collections policy of the NMI dictated a focus on acquiring Irish material culture. Therefore, the Albert Bender Donations of East Asian Art to the NMI are something of an anomaly. Albert M. Bender (1866-1941) was born in Dublin, the son of Rabbi Philip Bender. By the time he was an adolescent he had emigrated to San Francisco, California where by the turn of the 20th century he was one of the most successful insurance brokers on the west coast of the United States. Although first attracted to book collecting and modern art, both of which he generously supported he also became interested in Asian art. In honour of his mother, Augusta Bender, he donated approx. 260 artefacts of mostly Chinese, Japanese and Tibetan origin to the National Museum of Ireland between 1931 and 1936. The then Director of the National Museum, archaeologist Adolf Mahr, was Albert Bender’s main point of contact throughout the donations.
The objects collected by Bender and subsequently donated to the NMI include a rare set of Thangkas (paintings on cotton) of the Arhats (disciples) of Buddha and four Lokapalas (Guardians) of the Four Quarters of the World from a Tibetan-Buddhist temple dating to the 18th century. Also included are textiles associated with the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911 AD), Japanese Ukiyo-e (woodblock prints), a Daoist priest’s robe from 17th/18th century China and several decorative arts objects in the areas of metalwork, ceramics and wood.
This lecture is generously sponsored by Dr H Y Mok Charitable Foundation.
Speaker
-
Audrey WhittyDeputy Director/Head of Collections and Learning, National Museum of IrelandDr Audrey Whitty has been Head of Collections and Learning since April 2019. In September 2021 in addition to this role, she was also appointed Deputy Director. She is a member of the senior management team, and is responsible for all aspects of the care and interpretation of the 5 and a half million objects and specimens in the collections across the four sites. This includes management of the four curatorial departments (Art & Industry, Irish Antiquities, Irish Folklife, Natural History), Conservation, Registration, Education, Photography, Design and the Museum’s exhibitions and publications programmes.
From 2015-19 Dr Whitty was Keeper of the Art and Industrial Division (Decorative Arts, Design and History), National Museum of Ireland (NMI). She was responsible for all collections, exhibitions, and leading the curatorial department and team on the Collins Barracks site. From 2015 she project-managed and opened several exhibitions at Collins Barracks, including the acclaimed Proclaiming a Republic: The 1916 Rising exhibition. During 2013 and 2014 she was Curator of European and Asian Glass at The Corning Museum of Glass, New York where she was responsible for an extensive collection in what is widely regarded as the greatest glass museum in the world. From 2001 to 2013, Dr Whitty was Curator of Ceramics, Glass and Asian collections, Art and Industrial Division, NMI. She has curated numerous exhibitions, most notably A Dubliner’s Collection of Asian Art: The Albert Bender Exhibition and the National Museum’s visible storage facility What’s In Store? (approx. 16,500 objects), which showcases some of the museum’s most important collections of applied arts.
A graduate (B.A.: History and Archaeology) and postgraduate (M.A.: Archaeology) of University College Dublin, she also has a doctorate from Trinity College Dublin in History of Art as a result of her thesis, ‘The Albert Bender (1866-1941) Donations of Far Eastern Art to the National Museum of Ireland in the context of his Cultural Interests in Ireland and California’.
In addition to her role at the National Museum she has been Irish Commissioner to both European Ceramic Context and European Glass Context, 2006-12 (European Union-wide biennales of contemporary glass and ceramics), which take place on the Danish island of Bornholm. In 2009 she became the first Irish woman to be elected to the International Academy of Ceramics based in Geneva. She is currently Chair of the Irish Museums Association and a trustee of the British Glass Foundation/White House Cone Museum of Glass, UK.
She has authored over eighty publications and lectured to such institutions as the Sorbonne, Paris; Trinity College Dublin; Art Institute of Chicago; National Maritime Museum, Greenwich; SOFA (Sculptural Objects and Functional Art), Chicago; National University of Ireland, Galway; the American Irish Historical Society, New York City; the Irish-Chinese Cultural Society; New York Metropolitan Glass Club; University College Dublin; Museum of Glass, Tacoma, Washington; National University of Ireland, Maynooth and National College of Art & Design, Dublin. She is author of the major publication, The Albert Bender Collection of Asian Art in the National Museum of Ireland, which was published by the National Museum of Ireland and Wordwell Books in 2011.
