Sackler Museum Receives 300 Works

Former Fogg Art Museum curator Stuart Cary Welch '50 donated 300 works of Islamic art to the Arthur M. Sackler Museum last week.

The collected works, which include drawings, paintings and other objects of Persian, Turkish and Indian origin, is the largest donation the museum's Islamic and Later Indian Art department has ever received.

Of the 300 pieces, about 190 are from the Rajasthan area in northeast India. James Cuno, director of the Harvard University Art Museums, said the new works make the Sackler home to the strongest collection of Rajasthani material in the country.

Another significant feature of the donation, Cuno said, is the large number of Indian drawings--rarely seen in such a large concentration.

Welch has been collecting Islamic art for more than 50 years. Although he never formally studied the subject, he is considered an expert in his field and his collection is one of the most extensive in the world.

He acquired most of his works from the 1940s to the 1970s, a period when few scholars knew or cared about Islamic art. Due to the lack of interest, Welch acquired his large collection, particularly the drawings, for less than he would have spent to buy European works.

Welch said that he has always valued many different kinds of art.

"I do not trust 'specialists' who close their eyes to the works of art from cultures other than their own," he wrote in an e-mail message.

Throughout his career, Welch has tried to increase awareness of Islamic art.

According to Cuno, Welch "combined a connoisseur's eye with a scholar's inclination" and laid the foundation for what was only recently a brand new discipline.

"Through his enthusiasm and his knowledge, he trained generations of leaders in the field," Cuno said.

Although Welch said he would not have considered parting with so much of his collection as recently as a year ago, he is now eager for the Sackler to house his treasures so that students may have access to them.

"Over the years," he wrote, "a small number of students are likely to discover and become deeply committed to the thrilling interconnected worlds of Persian, Turkish and Indian art through the very works that I have been happy to bring together."

Welch joined the Islamic Art and Later Indian Art department at the Fogg after receiving his master's in ancient art from Harvard. He was appointed curator of the department in 1976 and served until his retirement in 1995.

For nine years during his tenure at Harvard, Welch also headed the Islamic Art department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He planned many exhibitions on Indian art here, at the Metropolitan and at New York's Asia Society.