Hollis, Howard Coonley (1899-1985)
Dates
- Existence: 1899 - 1985
Biography
Howard Coonley Hollis was the CMA’s curator of Oriental art, 1929-1945, and curator of Near Eastern and Far Eastern Art, 1945-1949. His singular career at the museum had a dramatic impact on the Museum’s Japanese art collection in the early post-World War II years.
Hollis received his BA and MA from Harvard College, worked at the Fogg Museum, and was an “assistant in Chinese,” also at Harvard. At some point he travelled in Asia and moved to Beijing where he lived for over two years. Before his appointment at the CMA, he was assistant and secretary of the Educational Committee at the Harvard-Yenching Institute in 1927-28.
In 1930 the Whittemore bequest for the purchase of Asian art enabled Hollis to develop a significant collection for the museum. Hollis organized important exhibitions, of South Asiatic art in 1930, Persian art in 1931, Chinese ceramics in 1940, and, particularly, Islamic art in 1944. Among the notable objects purchased by the museum during his term are the lacquered drum stand of the late Chou dynasty; “Dancing Shiva, Nataraia, Lord of the Dance,” an Indian fourteenth-century sculpture; a landscape scroll by Mi Yujen, Chinese, twelfth century; and Japanese screens with horses and attendants, fifteenth to sixteenth centuries.
In 1946, Hollis was on leave to serve as officer in charge of the Tokyo Bureau of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Division of the US Occupying Forces in Japan. In this position, he oversaw the field work of fellow “Monuments Men” Sherman E. Lee (Hollis’ successor as the museum’s curator of Asian art), Charles F. Gallagher, and Capt. Walter D. Popham in Japan and Korea. Together, these American specialists in Eastern art collaborated with the Japanese Ministry of Education to register, inspect, and preserve Japanese monuments, ancient temples, national parks, and cultural objects.
Hollis returned to the museum in August 1947. He resigned in January 1949 to form Howard Hollis & Company in Cleveland and became a highly respected dealer of imported Asian art from Japan. His clients included the CMA, the Seattle Museum of Art, the Toledo Museum of Art, and the Sackler Family. The year of his resignation he assisted the museum in acquiring nineteen Japanese works. In 1961, his business expanded to a second showroom in New York City. His publications included journal articles and book reviews in The Far Eastern Quarterly, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Art and Thought, Bulletin of the Medical Library Association, and numerous articles in the CMA Bulletin.
After a long and successful career, Howard Hollis retired to New Hampshire, where he died in 1985.
-Biography by Anne Cuyler Salsich, 2024