A Scholar’s Eye: Selections from the Rosenzweig Collection

April 3 – June 6, 2004

Dorothy Jenkins Gallery

This exhibition is sponsored by Charles H. and Dorothy Jenkins and Mark and Lynn Hollis.

Dr. Daphne Lange Rosenzweig (A.B., Mount Holyoke College, M.A. and Ph.D., Columbia University) is an art historian specializing in East Asian art. After extensive study in Asia, as a Fulbright Scholar, she has taught at several major universities and is currently a faculty member of the Liberal Arts Program at the Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida. She teaches courses in Asian art history and culture.

Dr. Rosenzweig is a member of numerous Asian studies and art history learned societies, and a fellow of both the American Oriental Society and the Royal Asiatic Society-Korea Branch. She has organized many museum exhibitions, including Power and Pride: Later Korean Painting, which was exhibited at the Polk Museum of Art in 1996. Dr. Rosenzweig is the author of over 45 publications on Asian art, particularly the jades, paintings and ceramics of Qing dynasty China, classic Japanese prints, and Korean painting; she also reviews books for professional journals. She is a frequent guest lecturer at Asian cultural institutions, professional conferences and museums, and a nationally recognized appraiser of Asian art.

Many of the items in the Rosenzweig collection are related to the marriage between Daphne and Dr. Abraham Rosenzweig. The wedding took place in 1969 in a Confucian ceremony at the Taipei Law Court, on an auspicious day chosen by the Director of the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan. Other works have been collected through the years, and represent the specific interests of either Daphne or Abe, or represent their collective interests. Some reflect the kindness of friends and relatives who have donated works to the Rosenzweigs over the years. Because of Daphne’s career as an educator, she has sought out objects that are particularly well-suited for teaching purposes. Many of the objects simply reflect the taste in art shared by Daphne and Abe: an appreciation of tactile surfaces, monochromatic statements, and individual artistic efforts rather than workshop collective efforts. This taste is most evident in the 20th-century Japanese prints in their collection, where simplicity is valued over ornate decoration.