Full Name: Siret, A.
Gender: unknown
Date Born: 1810
Date Died: 1888
Dictionnaire des peintres de toutes les écoles depuis l’origine de la peinture jusqu’à nos jours. 2nd ed. 1866.
Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986 p. 378
Full Name: Sirén, Osvald
Other Names:
Gender: male
Date Born: 1879
Date Died: 1966
Place Born: Helsinki, Newland Regin, Finland
Place Died: Stockholm, Sweden
Home Country/ies: Finland
Subject Area(s): Ancient Chinese, Chinese (culture or style), Chinese painting styles, East Asian, Italian (culture or style), painting (visual works), and sculpture (visual works)
Career(s): art collectors and curators
Scholar of Italian Trecento but more notably one of the early Western scholars and collectors of Oriental art; professor of Fine Arts at Stockholm University, 1908-1925 and Keeper of Painting and Sculpture, National Museum in Stockholm, 1928-1944. He was born in Helsinki, Finland, which is formerly part of Russia. Sién studied at the University in Helsinki under J. J. Tikkanen, receiving his Ph.D. in 1900. His interested in early Italian Renaissance art secured a position as assistant at the National Museum in Stockholm in 1901 and the acquaintance of Bernard Berenson, whom he visited at Berenson’s Villa I Tatti the following year. Sién was appointed the first professor of Fine Arts at the Stockholms universitet (Stockholm University) in 1908. Like a number of art scholars in the early twentieth century, he authenticated art works for commercial galleries and advised private art collectors, including the beer-fortune heirs of the Sinebrychoff family of Helsinki. He became a devotee of Theosophy and perhaps for that reason, developed an interest in Asia. Sién published his first academic monograph, Giotto and Some of his Followers, in 1917. However, he had been focusing on Asian art since 1914. He wrote an exhibition catalog for an Asian art show for the University’s Konsthistoriska institutionen in 1918. That year, too, he made his first trip to Asia, returning periodically 1921-1923, 1929-1930 and in 1935 to document art with his camera and purchase pieces. Beginning in 1924, he issued volume one of his The Walls and Gates of Peking. Never a comfortable lecturer, he resigned from the university in 1925. The same year, he issued his four-volume (one of text and three of plates) Chinese Sculpture from the Fifth to the Fourteenth Century, the result of his examination of the caves of Yün-kang and Lung-men. Here Sién set forth his classification system, a system which was subsequently adopted by scholars or Chinese art. Also in 1925, Sién contributed the section on Chinese sculpture for a primer on Chinese art, a combined effort with leading British art historians, including Roger Fry, Laurence Binyon, A. F. Kendrick, Bernard Rackham, and the Asianists W. Perceval Yetts (1878-1957), and William Wilberforce Winkworth (1897-1991), under the title Chinese Art: an Introductory Handbook. He was appointed Keeper (curator) of Painting and Sculpture at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm in 1928. Through the Museum he came into contact with Otto Kümmel, the Berlin Asianist and later Berlin Museums Director. In 1929, his History of Early Chinese Art was published, one of the first surveys of the genre. All of these books took the format of plates with accompanying text, rather than an historical narrative. Sién now focused on Chinese painting, writing books largely for western audiences. Two painting histories, History of Early Chinese Painting and History of Later Chinese Painting appeared 1933 and 1938 respectively. In between he was instrumental in the mounting of the 1935-1936 “Exhibition of Chinese Art” at the Burlington House, London. During his 1935 trip to China, he issued a collection of indigenous writings on art, The Chinese on the Art of Painting in 1936. Confined to Sweden during World War II, he wrote and published his first narrative survey, in Swedish, Kinas konst under tre Értusenden, as well as researching a book on Chinese gardens at his home in Lidingö. He retired from the Museum in 1944. His first gardens book, Tradgardar i Kina, appeared in 1948. Sién never abandoned his interest in western art. In retirement, he made an extensive visit to England where he photographed and researched British gardens. Sién updated and reissued his early writings in a seven-volume edition, Chinese Painting: Leading Masters and Principles beginning in 1956. The same year he was awarded the first Charles Freer Medal by the Freer Gallery of Art in Washgington, D. C. Much of his collection was purchased by the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities in Stockholm. “Sién was one of the leading figures in what may be called the heroic age of Chinese art history as it [was] pursued by occidentals.” (Watson). His intent was in part to create a documentary collection of images which other scholars could use to further their research. As such, his books are conceived as images with accompanying text, much like Berenson’s books on Italian painters. His catalogs of Chinese works were, in Watson’s terms, comprehensive rather than critical. He embraced Asian culture profoundly (his Chinese Sculpture book was issued in the loose-plate manner of Chinese books). Nearly all of his monographs were composed in English, except for Kinas konst under tre Értusenden. He lectured very little, preferring to comment in print. His legacy includes a large photographic collection, much of which documents art, architecture and gardens no longer in that form.
[bibliography to 1960:] Munthe, Gustaf Lorentz, ed. Osvaldo Sire´n octogenario die sexto Aprilis A.D. MCMLIX. Stockholm, Natur och kultur, 1960; Giotto and Some of his Followers. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1917; The Walls and Gates of Peking: Researches and Impressions. 3 vols. New York: Orientalia, 1924, 1926; Chinese Sculpture from the Fifth to the Fourteenth Century. 4 vols. London: E. Benn, 1925; and Fry, Roger Eliot, and Binyon, Laurence, and Kendrick, Albert Frank, and Rackham, Bernard, et al. Chinese Art: an Introductory Handbook to Painting, Sculpture, Ceramics, Textiles, Bronzes & Minor Arts. London: Burlington Magazine/B. T. Batsford, 1925; A History of Early Chinese Art. 4 vols. London: E. Benn, 1929-1930; A History of Early Chinese Painting. 2 vols. London: The Medici Society, 1933; The Chinese on the Art of Painting. Beijing: H. Vetch, 1936; A History of Later Chinese Painting. 2 vols. London: Medici Society, 1938; Kinas Konst under Tre Értusenden. 2 vols. Stockholm: Natur och Kultur, 1942, 1943; China and Gardens of Europe of the Eighteenth Century. New York: Ronald Press Co., 1950; Chinese Painting: Leading Masters and Principles. 7 vols. New York: Ronald Press, 1956-1958. [art collection:] Gyllensvärd, Bo. The Osvald Sién Collection. Helsinki: s. n., 1968
“A Chinese Emperor Plays Photographer’s Assistant.” New York Times Magazine April 22, 1923; , Honour, Hugh. “Introduction.” Sire´n, Osvald. China and Gardens of Europe of the Eighteenth Century. 2nd ed. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1990, pp. v-ix; Harris, John. “In Honour of Osvald Siren, and Recollections.” Apollo 134 (August 1991): 104-7; Vakkari, Johanna. “Alcuni contemporanei finlandesi di Lionello Venturi: Osvald Siren, Tancred Borenius, Onni Okkonen.” Storia dell’Arte 101 (2002): 108-17; Tan, Yvonne. “Osvald Siren in the Chinese Gardens.” Asian Art June 2007; [obituaries] Watson, William. The Burlington Magazine 108 (September 1966): 484-5; “Prof. Osvald Siren Authority On Chinese Art.” The Times (London), June 17, 1966, p. 14.
Scholar of Italian Trecento but more notably one of the early Western scholars and collectors of Oriental art; professor of Fine Arts at Stockholm University, 1908-1925 and Keeper of Painting and Sculpture, National Museum in Stockholm, 1928-1944.
Full Name: Singer, Hans Wolfgang
Gender: male
Date Born: 1867
Date Died: 1957
Place Born: New York, NY, USA
Place Died: Dresden, Saxony, Germany
Home Country/ies: Germany
Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 389-91.
Full Name: Singelenberg, Pieter
Gender: male
Date Born: 1918
Date Died: 2007
Place Born: Tilburg, North Brabant, Netherlands
Place Died: The Hague, South Holland, Netherlands
Home Country/ies: Netherlands
Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), Dutch (culture or style), and sculpture (visual works)
Netherlands Historian of architecture, art history professor. Singelenberg grew up in The Hague and in the nearby village of Wassenaar. After graduating from high school (HBS B) he began studying medicine at Leiden University. In 1939, during war mobilization, he was recruited for military service. When he was able to resume his study, Singelenberg switched to art history at Utrecht University, beginning in 1941. He studied under Willem Vogelsang, Louis Grondijs (1878-1961), and later under G. J. Hoogewerff. The last two years of German occupation Singelenberg lived in hiding. In 1946 he married Miep van der Meer (1917-2008). In that year he obtained an assistantship under Grondijs, professor of iconography and religious art at Utrecht University, where he taught iconography. After his graduation, in 1953, he stayed in Utrecht conducting research in Byzantine and mediaeval art. One of his topics was a sixth-century Byzantine ivory relief, the so called Etschmiadzin Diptych. He published the results of this study in the Art Bulletin in 1958. Between 1956 and 1964 he served as the keeper of the art history institute, playing an active role in its development as an important study center. During that period he began researching architecture, especially the period around 1900. He traveled to the U.S. in 1956 and, in the academic year 1956-57, he taught the history of architecture at Oberlin College as well as gothic architecture and painting, from Giotto to Cézanne, at New York University. In 1965 he began research for his doctoral dissertation on the Dutch architect H. P. Berlage (1856-1934) under Murk Daniël Ozinga, who died in 1968. In 1969 Singelberg’s short monograph on Berlage appeared in the series Beeldende kunsten en bouwkunst in Nederland. In 1971 Singelenberg obtained his doctor’s degree from Utrecht University under Jacobus Johannes Terwen (1916-1998), an engineer and professor at Delft University of Technology. His dissertation published in 1972, was H. P. Berlage; Idea and Style: The Quest for Modern Architecture. His extensive article on the Hague Gemeentemuseum, designed by Berlage and built between 1931 and 1935, appeared in 1975. In that year Singelenberg was appointed lector in art history, focusing on architecture after 1750, at his Alma Mater. In 1978 he left Utrecht for Nijmegen, accepting the position of professor of art history at the Catholic University of Nijmegen. He retired in 1984 and was succeeded by the Rembrandt scholar Christian Tümpel. The topic of his 1985 farewell lecture was Berlage’s functionalism (zakelijkheid) and the rationalism of the Dutch architect and designer of furniture Gerrit Rietveld (1888-1964). From the 1970s onwards, Singelenberg, together with his wife and his son, Pieter Jr. gathered a private art collection, which included furniture, glass and ceramics. Miep Singelenberg-Van der Meer was a specialist in the field of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Dutch glasswork and ceramics. In 1986 Singelenberg taught at the University of Louisville (Kentucky) as Frederick Lindley Morgan Professor in Architectural History. Singelenberg also remained active in the field of the preservation of monuments. In 1995 he left his Utrecht house, designed by Rietveld, and moved to The Hague. In 1996 his monograph on the Hague Municipal Museum, designed by Berlage, appeared as a follow up to his 1975 article on this topic. He also wrote several entries on Dutch architects for The Dictionary of Art. He died at age 88. In his dissertation, H. P. Berlage; Idea and Style, Singelenberg traced Berlage’s artistic development up to his famous 1903 Amsterdam Exchange building. With respect to Berlage’s philosophical and social ideas, Singelenberg devoted ample attention to the writings of Gottfried Semper, which were of great importance to Berlage as a modern architect. In addition to paying attention to other “teachers” of Berlage, such as Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, Singelenberg focused on Berlage’s place within, and personal contribution to, the development of the modern style in North America and Europe. Hans L. C. Jaffé, in his 1975 review in the Burlington Magazine, considered Singelenberg’s detailed study a very successful contribution to the tradition of Kunstgeschiche als Geistesgeschichte. In the article on Berlage’s The Hague Gemeentemuseum, Singelenberg points to the socio-cultural ideas of Alfred Lichtwark and the practical recommendations of Benjamin Ives Gilman, who both had an impact on Berlage’s designs and on his pragmatic approach to the architecture of the building.
[review:] Jaffé, H. L. Burlington Magazine 117 (1975, nr. 867): 406-409; De Klerck, Bram. “Pieter Singelenberg Tilburg 2 augustus 1918 – Den Haag 21 februari 2007” Jaarboek van de Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde te Leiden 2007-2008. pp. 144-153; [obituaries:] Eaton, Leonard K. “Pieter Singelenberg, 1918-2007” Society of Architectural Historians Newsletter (August-September 2007): 13-14; Van Leeuwen, Wies. “Herinnering aan Pieter Singelenberg” Cuypersbulletin 12 (2007,3): 7-8; Peij, Ineke. “In memoriam professor dr. Pieter Singelenberg (1918-2007), kunsthistoricus” Desipientia; Zin & Waan 15 (2008,1): 41; [dissertation:] H. P. Berlage: Idea and Style.The Quest for Modern Architecture. Utrecht: Haentjens Dekker & Gumbert, 1972; “Het Haags Gemeentemuseum” in H. P.Berlage; een bouiwmeester en zjn tijd. Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 25 (1974) Bussum: Fibula-Van Dishoeck, 1975, pp. 1-89; [farewell lecture Catholic University Nijmegen:] Over zakelijkheid bij Berlage en rationalisme bij Rietveld. Nijmegen, 1985; Het Haags Gemeentemuseum van H. P. Berlage. The Hague, 1996.
Contributors: Monique Daniels
Netherlands Historian of architecture, art history professor. Singelenberg grew up in The Hague and in the nearby village of Wassenaar. After graduating from high school (HBS B) he began studying medicine at Leiden University. In 1939, during war
Full Name: Simson, Otto von
Other Names:
Gender: male
Date Born: 1912
Date Died: 1993
Place Born: Berlin, Germany
Place Died: Berlin, Germany
Home Country/ies: Germany
Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), Medieval (European), Renaissance, and sculpture (visual works)
Scholar of medieval and renaissance architectural and art history; professor at the University of Chicago 1945-1957. Simson was the son of Ernst Eduard von Simson, and undersecretary of state in the German foreign office, and Martha Enole (von Simson), a descendent of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786). His great grandfather had originally been Jewish but converted to Roman Catholicism. Simson himself grew up in the cultured home of his grandfather, the chemist Franz Oppenheim (1852-1929) in the “Villa Oppenheim.” Their neighbor was the director of the Hamburg Kunsthalle Alfred Lichtwark, who inhabited the villa formerly owned by Max Liebermann. The young Simson grew up among the masterworks of German Impressionism. His family was highly distinguished in German politics and statecraft, his father served as a state administrator. Simson attended the Arndtgymnasium in Berlin Dahlem Dorf. After graduation (age 17) he was sent to England to learn English. After returning, he entered the university in Freiburg studying art history under under Hans Jantzen, Walter F. Friedländer, and Kurt Bauch. He studied briefly in Berlin before focusing moving to Munich in 1932 to study under Wilhelm Pinder. Most of Simson’s work, however was under Hans Gerhard Evers. Simson completed a dissertation on Rubens, and published as Zur Genealogie der weltlichen Apotheose im Barock, besonders der Medicigalerie des Peter Paul Rubens, in 1936. He married the princess Aloysia (Louise) Alexandra von Schönburg Hartenstein (1906-1976) the same year. Simson worked initially at the Courtauld Institute Library in 1936 and as an editor for the periodical Hochland in Munich. He converted to Roman Catholicism in 1937. With Germany’s seizure of Czech lands, the so-called Czech Crisis, Simson was drafted into the German army. Shortly before the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Simson used his military Wehrpass (military pass) to visit American museums on the excuse of his being an art historian; he remained in the U.S. with his wife and children following. He taught briefly at Marymount College in Tarrytown, New York (1939-43) (an offer to teach at Johns Hopkins came too late) and St. Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana. In 1945 University of Chicago president Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899-1977) offered Simson a job in the University’s Committee on Social Thought and only secondarily in the Department of Art. He rose to full professor in 1951. During this period he produced two major books characteristic of his methodology. The first, The Sacred Fortress (he despised the title; it was suggested by his editor) appeared in 1948. He was also a guest resident at the University of Frankfurt in the years immediately after the war. Simson’s The Gothic Cathedral appeared in 1956 and with it a rave review in the Times Literary Supplement, but a caustic review by Sumner McKnight Crosby in the Art Bulletin. The heated exchange broke a long-standing friendship between the two. Simson returned to Germany in 1957, taking a position first at the university Frankfurt, and then as the first German member of UNESCO. In 1964 he became Director of the Kunsthistorisches Institut of the Freie Universität in Berlin (succeeding literary historian Hans Kaufmann, 1926-2000) and professor of modern art. At the Freie Universität he was instrumental in sponsoring several conferences on Dutch art, such as the 1970 one on Rembrandt and the 1975 one on Brueghel. In 1972 he edited and wrote the revision to the prestigious Propyläen Kunstgeschichte volume on the middle ages, Das Mittelalter II: das Hohe Mittelalter, along with Hermann Fillitz and others. After the death of his first wife in 1976, he married another woman of noble lineage, Marie-Anne zu Salm-Reifferscheidt-Krautheim und Dyck (b. 1933) in 1978. He remained at the Freie Universität until 1979. In 1986 his book, Der Blick nach Innen, the result of lectures he presented at Harvard on nineteenth-century German art, Simson put forth the concept of “Innerlichkeit” as characteristic in the work of four German painters, Caspar David Friedrich, Carl Spitzweg, Wilhelm Leibl and Ludwig Richter. The posthumous Peter Paul Rubens (1577 1640) Humanist, Maler, Diplomat (1996) brought together Simson’s work on the artist with whom he had been preoccupied, though little published, for much of his career. Simson’s methodology was in large part to lay an intellectual Geistesgeschichte framework over his studies of medieval architecture. His book The Sacred Fortress deals with the mosaics of Ravenna in terms of the liturgy which would have been used at the time. Because of the war, Simson never had a chance to examine the mosaics during the time he wrote the book. His Gothic Cathedral put him in the middle of a wider, 20th-century dialogue on Gothic architecture with Hans Sedlmayr, Erwin Panofsky and Crosby. He and Sedlmayr wrote of the Gothic church as a mystical Gesamtkunstwerk, a totality of all artistic media, whose meaning had to be derived from experiencing the building as a whole, as opposed to scholars who sought to dissect a building to interpret its iconographic parts (Crossley). Simson’s erudite study of Abbot Suger’s choir in the Gothic Cathedral postulated the formation of the Gothic as a combination of “Pseudo-Dionysian light metaphysics” and the harmonic ratios of musical cosmology. This interpretation was challenged by Martin Gosebruch and denied by Peter Kidson as over-intellectualizing. Simson’s published dissertation on the secular apotheosis in Baroque art found praise early from Panofsky. Simson conceived his Propyläen series Das Mittelalter II: das Hohe Mittelalter as an extension of his Gothic Cathedral, but greatly internationalized, with Polish scholars writing the sections on the art in Poland formerly under German rule. He was known as an engaging lecturer and warm to his many students.
[dissertation:] Zur Genealogie der weltlichen Apotheose im Barock: besonders der Medicigalerie des P. P. Rubens. University of Munich, published under same title as, Strassburg: Heitz, 1936; The Gothic Cathedral: Origins of Gothic Architecture and the Medieval Concept of Order. New York: Pantheon Books, 1956. The Sacred Fortress: Byzantine Art and Statecraft in Ravenna. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948; [Kunsthistorisches Institut, Freie Universität Rembrandt conference] and Kelch, Jan, eds. Neue Beiträge zur Rembrandt-Forschung. Berlin: Mann, 1973; and Winner, Matthias. Pieter Bruegel und seine Welt. Berlin: Mann, 1979; Das Mittelalter II: das Hohe Mittelalter. Propyläen Kunstgeschichte 6. Berlin: Propyläen Verlag, 1972; “The Birth of the Gothic.” Measure, a Critical Journal 1 no. 3 (Summer 1950): 275-296; Der Blick nach Innen: vier Beiträge zur deutschen Malerei des 19. Jahrhunderts. Berlin: Hentrich, 1986; “über die Bedeutung von Masaccios Trinitätsfresko in S. Maria Novella.” Sonderdruck aus Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 8 (1966): 119-159; Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640): Humanist, Maler und Diplomat. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1996; Von der Macht des Bildes im Mittelalter: gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kunst des Mittelalters. Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1993.
Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Research Guide to the History of Western Art. Sources of Information in the Humanities, no. 2. Chicago: American Library Association, 1982, p. 71, mentioned, p. 127; Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, p. 67 cited, p. 81 cited, pp. 85, 87 mentioned; Lucius Grisebach, ed. Festschrift für Otto von Simson zum 65. Geburtstag. Frankfurt am Main: Propyläen Verlag, 1977, [biographical essay]; Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 387-9; Art Historian Otto von Simson. Oral History Collection, Dept. of Special Collections, University of California, Los Angeles Library, 1994; Wendland, Ulrike. Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben und Werk der unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertriebenen Wissenschaftler. Munich: Saur, 1999, vol. 2, pp. 643-649; [transcript] “Otto von Simson, interviewed by Richard Cándida Smith.” Art History Oral Documentation Project. Getty Research Institute, Malibu, CA; Crossley, Paul. “The Gothic church as a Gesamtkunstwerk and the notion of ‘artistic integration’ in Gothic architecture.” [sect xvi of] “Introduction: Frankl’s Text: Its Achievement and Significance.” Frankl, Paul and Crossley, Paul. Gothic Architecture. 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000, p. 24, 27-28.
Scholar of medieval and renaissance architectural and art history; professor at the University of Chicago 1945-1957. Simson was the son of Ernst Eduard von Simson, and undersecretary of state in the German foreign office, and Martha Enole (von Sim
Full Name: Sievers, Johannes
Gender: male
Date Born: 27 June 1880
Date Died: 1969
Place Born: Berlin, Germany
Place Died: Berlin, Germany
Home Country/ies: Germany
Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre) and sculpture (visual works)
Institution(s): Kunstabteilung des Auswärtigen Amt
Ministerial official and private scholar who specialized in the works of architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Johannes Sievers was born in Berlin to the decoration painter Carl Georg Wilhelm Sievers (1834-1891) in 1880. His father was responsible for many of the rooms of nobles. His mother was Luise Wittfeld, Moers (Sievers) (1843,-1903). From 1903-1906, he studied art history, philosophy, and archaeology under several different instructors, including Karl Voll, Wesse, Arthur Haseloff, and Heinrich Wölfflin. He completed his dissertation on the contributions of Pieter Aertsen to Dutch art in the 16th century. He married a Jewish woman, Herma Schiffer in 1907. During his years of study, he also completed various study trips throughout Europe, the United States, and East Asia. From 1906-1908 he served as a volunteer at the Kaiser Friedrich Museum of Prints and Drawings, part of the Berlin State Museums. In 1908, he assumed the role of a scientific assistant in the Modern Department. From 1912-1918, Sievers served as an Art Consultant at the Prussian Ministry of Culture under the head of the department Friedrich Schmidt-Ott (1860-1956), although his role there would become purely titular as a result of his military service in World War I in Ghent, Belgium from 1915-1918. Returning from his service in Ghent, Sievers became Legation Councilor for the Kunstabteilung des Auswärtigen Amt (Art Affairs in the Cultural Department of the Foreign Office) in Germany. His duties in this position varied; notable accomplishments include his restoration of monuments, furnishing of several former Hohenzollern palaces, and the conception and coordination of exhibitions of German art abroad. He was named professor in 1918 as well. He taught and worked until the new Nazi government forced an abrupt leave of absence on him in 1933. This lasted until 1937, when he was be forced to retire as a representative of the Weimar Republic for his steadfast commitment to the promotion of modern art in Germany and his wife’s “non-Aryan” descent. Thereafter, he became a private scholar. It was during this time that Paul Ortwin Rave asked Sievers to write several volumes of Rave’s corpus of Schinkel’s work, beginning 1942 with Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Bauten für den Prinzen Karl von Preußen. A final book on Schinkel, Das Vorbild des »Neuen Pavillons« von Karl Friedrich Schinkel im Schloßpark Charlottenburg, 1960, was an independent publication.
During his time working at the Foreign Office, Sievers sought to both restore Germany’s historic artistic and architectural hallmarks and promote modern German art movements. Of equal importance, he was a staunch advocate of showcasing German art around the world.
Contributors: Paul Kamer
Ministerial official and private scholar who specialized in the works of architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Johannes Sievers was born in Berlin to the decoration painter Carl Georg Wilhelm Sievers (1834-1891) in 1880. His father was responsible fo
Full Name: Sieveking, Johannes
Gender: male
Date Born: 1869
Date Died: 1942
Place Born: Hamburg, Germany
Home Country/ies: Germany
Subject Area(s): Antique, the, Classical, and Roman (ancient Italian culture or period)
Specialist in ancient Roman art. Spent most of his career at the Antiquarium in Munich (Münchner Sammlung antiker Kleinkunst). Together with Ludwig Curtius, he edited the papers of his mentor Adolf Furtwängler after Furtwängler’s untimely death.
Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 173-174.
Specialist in ancient Roman art. Spent most of his career at the Antiquarium in Munich (Münchner Sammlung antiker Kleinkunst). Together with Ludwig Curtius, he edited the papers of his mentor Adolf F
Full Name: Sieber, Roy
Other Names:
Gender: male
Date Born: 1923
Date Died: 14 September 2001
Place Born: Shawano, WI, USA
Place Died: Bloomington, Monroe, IN, USA
Home Country/ies: United States
Subject Area(s): African (general, continental cultures), African sculpture styles, decorative art (art genre), hair (material), metal, sculpture (visual works), and textile art (visual works)
Career(s): art historians, curators, and educators
Early American historian of African art, founder of the discipline of African art history in the United States; Rudy Professor of Fine Arts, Indiana University, 1974-. As a child, Sieber accompanied his parents on trips to Chicago visiting the Art Institute of Chicago and, most importantly for him, the Field Museum where many African artifacts were displayed. He graduated from the New School for Social Research in New York in 1949 guided in his studies by Meyer Schapiro, Rudolf Arnheim, and the artist Mauricio Lasansky. Sieber moved to the University of Iowa where he received his M.A. in 1951. In 1956, Sieber curated a small exhibition of African art while studying at the University. The following year his Ph.D. was granted (1957). His dissertation, on African art, was the first in the United States. Titled “African Tribal Sculpture,” it examined the spiritual and religious connections between African sculptors and their work. In 1959 he contributed an essay to the Cleveland Museum of Art exhibition, Seven Metals of Africa. He joined Indiana University as an associate professor in 1962, one of the original scholars in the University’s nascent African Studies Program as the Rudy Professor of Fine Arts. In 1983, Sieber became Associate Director for Collections and Research at the National Museum of African Art (Smithsonian Collections), where he was responsible for evaluating collection research and developing acquisition standards. Sieber received the first Leadership Award from the Arts Council of the African Studies Association in 1986. At the Museum, he curated several major exhibitions, including African Art in the Cycle of Life (1987) with Roslyn Walker, the inaugural exhibition of the museum’s site on the Mall. Sieber authored the introduction to Selected Works from the Collection of the National Museum of African Art and Hair in African Art and Culture and the essay in “Extreme Canvas: Hand-Painted Movie Posters From Ghana.” He relinquished his Smithsonian position in 1993 to found an art collection on the Bloomington campus called “The House of Nigeria.” He suffered a stroke and died in 2001. A Roy Sieber Fellowship at the Henry Hope School of Fine Arts was established in his memory. His students included Cornelius Oyeleke Adepegba and Martha G. Anderson. Sieber is considered the “founder of the discipline of African art history in the United States” (Kreamer). His major publications, such as African Textiles and the Decorative Arts (1980), are object-oriented discussions that also explain the social context of the works examined.
Sculpture of Northern Nigeria, New York: New York Museum of Primitive Art, published by University Publishers, 1961; Sculpture of Black Africa: The Paul Tishman Collection, Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1968; African Masterworks in the Detroit Institute of the Arts, Washington, D.C.: Published for the Detroit Institute of the Arts by the Smithsonian Institution, 1995.
African Arts 25 no. 4 (October, 1992); DAI 17, no.12 (1957): 2970; Kreamer, Christine Mullen. “A Tribute to Roy Sieber: Part I.” African Arts 36 no. 1 (Spring 2003): 12-23, 91, Part 2. African Arts 36 no. 2 (Summer 2003): 10-29, 94; [obituaries:] Gupta, Pritha. “Indiana U. mourns loss of a legend.” Indiana [University] Daily Student. September 18, 2001; “Roy Sieber, 78, Dies, Smithsonian Official.” Washington PostSeptember 21, 2001, p. B7
Contributors: LaNitra Michele Walker and Lee Sorensen
Early American historian of African art, founder of the discipline of African art history in the United States; Rudy Professor of Fine Arts, Indiana University, 1974-. As a child, Sieber accompanied his parents on trips to Chicago visiting the Art
Full Name: Siebenhüner, Herbert
Gender: male
Date Born: 1908
Home Country/ies: Germany
Subject Area(s): ancient and Antique, the
Institution(s): Universität Leipzig
historian of ancient art
Das Kapitol in Rom: Idee und Gestalt. Munich: 1954.
KMP, 67 cited
Contributors: Lee Sorensen
historian of ancient art
Full Name: Sickman, Laurence
Other Names:
Gender: male
Date Born: 1907
Date Died: 1988
Place Born: Denver, CO, USA
Place Died: Kansas City, Jackson, MO, USA
Home Country/ies: United States
Subject Area(s): Asian, Chinese (culture or style), connoisseurship, and East Asian
Connoisseur and scholar of Chinese art, director of the Nelson-Atkins Museum. Sickman became interested in Chinese and Japanese art as a high school student in Denver. At the advice of John Ellerton Lodge, director of the Freer Gallery, he attended Harvard University, where he continued to study Chinese languages and art. At Harvard, he had courses with the French Sinologist Paul Pelliot (1878-1945) and Langdon Warner. In 1930, as a recent graduate of Harvard University, Sickman traveled extensively in China on a Harvard-Yenching Fellowship. In China he met Warner in 1931, a trustee of the newly established Nelson Gallery of Art in Kansas City who had been given charge of acquiring art for it. Warner was in charge of part of an $11 million bequest by William Rockhill Nelson, founder of the Kansas City Star, to establish a museum. Warner took him to the sophisticated antiquaries of Peking where Warner was buying art. When Warner left China, he recommended to the Nelson Board that Sickman take over. Sickman was collecting during a period when treasures of Chinese art were appearing on the market now without indication of provenance. Eventually, Warner gave Sickman broad responsibility to buy works for the museum on his own–but with Warner’s ultimate approval. Frequently Sickman and Warner could not agree and there was nothing Sickman could do. “He had a very strange eye,” Sickman would later recount. But Sickman had the use of an airplane in China which greatly assisted his acquisitions. He acquired some of the best paintings directly from the Chinese emperor Pu Yi, the last monarch of the Qing Dynasty. Pu had lived in the Forbidden City until 1924 when he had fled to the Japanese compound at Tianjin. He had taken many personal treasures with him from Peking. According to Sickman, the emperor was more interested in his new Japanese motorcycle, and Sickman was left alone to pick the works he wanted. Other treasures, such as the magnificent Hsü Tao-ning scroll showed up anonymously at night by unnamed owners who, during that time period, needed money rather quickly. It was his core purchases that put the museum’s collections among the finest Asian in the United States. Sickman is credited for saving and documenting many Chinese art works which otherwise might have been dispersed to more unreliable sources. In the late 1930s, for example, Sickman recognized fragments of an early sixth-century AD limestone relief appearing in various locations. With the help of the Metropolitan Museum, who bought some along with Sickman, reunited them. They are now known as “The Empress as Donor with Attendants,” six-feet by nine-feet long sculpture from the Binyang cave of the Longman cave temples. He became the curator of Oriental art there upon his return to Kansas City in 1935. Sickman was an early exponent of installing art in a context. The Chinese art he hung was arranged with minor art and furniture in order to give a notion of its original environment. In 1937 Edward Waldo Forbes offered his a position at Harvard’s Fogg Art museum, but Sickman turned it down graciously to remain with the collection he built. During World War II, he served as an army combat officer in intelligence in the Far East, later advising in the arts and monuments section at General MacArthur’s headquarters in Tokio. After 1945, he returned to the museum. In 1953, Sickman was appointed the museum’s director, a position he would hold until his retirement in 1977. In 1956 he published the Pelican History of Art volume, together with Alexander Soper (q.v.) in their area, The Art and Architecture of China.
and Soper, Alexander. The Art and Architecture of China. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1956, rev. ed., 1971; edited. Chinese Calligraphy and Painting in the Collection of John M. Crawford, Jr. New York: Pierpont Morgan Library,1962; “Early Chinese Landscape Painting.” Artibus Asiae 19:1 (1956): 56-8; “Kuei of the Prince of San.” Bulletin of the Fogg Art Museum 9 (March 1940): 28-34; “Some Chinese Brushes.” Technical Studies in the Field of the Fine Arts 8 (July 1939): 61-71; “Notes on Later Chinese Buddhist Art.” Parnassus 11 (Apr 1939): 12-17.
Obituary, New York Times, May 11, 1988, Section D; Page 19; The Times (London) May 13 1988; Michael Churchman, ed. Laurence Sickman: A Tribute. Kansas City, MO: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1988.; Addiss, Stephen. “Hills and Valleys Within: Laurence Sickman and the Oriental Collection.” Oriental Art (ns) 24: 2 (Summer 1978): 228-30; “Lt. Laurence Sickman.” Art Digest 16 (July 1942): 9.
Connoisseur and scholar of Chinese art, director of the Nelson-Atkins Museum. Sickman became interested in Chinese and Japanese art as a high school student in Denver. At the advice of John Ellerton Lodge, director of the Fre