Max Loehr (4 December 1903 – 16 September 1988) was an art historian and professor of Chinese art at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

from 1960 to 1974. As an authority on Chinese art, Loehr published eight books and numerous articles on ancient Chinese painting.

Biography

Max Loehr was born in Chemnitz, Saxony, Germany, in 1903. He entered the

University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich, LMU or LMU Munich; ) is a public university, public research university in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Originally established as the University of Ingolstadt in 1472 by Duke ...

in 1931, where he studied Far Eastern art and obtained his PhD in 1936. Then he worked at the Museum Five Continents in Munich on the Asian collections. In 1940, Loehr went to Beijing to study at the Sino-German Center for Research Promotion, later striving as director of the institute and as assistant professor at

Tsinghua University Tsinghua University (THU) is a public university in Haidian, Beijing, China. It is affiliated with and funded by the Ministry of Education of China. The university is part of Project 211, Project 985, and the Double First-Class Constructio ...

. In 1949, he returned to his former post in Munich, and two years after that he moved to the United States to become a professor at the

University of Michigan The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...

. In 1960, Loehr accepted the

Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Abigail Greene Aldrich Rockefeller (October 26, 1874 – April 5, 1948) was an American socialite and philanthropist. She was a prominent member of the Rockefeller family through her marriage to financier and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller ...

Chair position in East Asian Art at

, and took a post as curator of

Orient The Orient is a term referring to the East in relation to Europe, traditionally comprising anything belonging to the Eastern world. It is the antonym of the term ''Occident'', which refers to the Western world. In English, it is largely a meto ...

al art at the

Fogg Museum The Harvard Art Museums are part of Harvard University and comprise three museums: the Fogg Museum (established in 1895), the Busch-Reisinger Museum (established in 1903), and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum (established in 1985), and four research ...

until his retirement in 1974. Loehr died in 1988 in

Nashua, New Hampshire Nashua () is a city in southern New Hampshire, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it had a population of 91,322, the second-largest in northern New England after nearby Manchester, New Hampshire, Manchester. It is on ...

Selected works

Books

*''Chinese Landscape Woodcuts: From an Imperial Commentary to the Tenth-Century Printed Edition of the Buddhist Canon'' (1968) Harvard University Press. *''Ritual Vessels of Bronze Age China'' (1974) New York: Asia Society Inc. *''Ancient Chinese Jades From the Grenville L WInthrop Collection in the Fogg Art Museum'' (1975), Fogg Art Museum/ Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts *''The Great Painters of China'' (1980) Oxford: Phaidon Press.

Articles

*''Germany's Contemporary Painters'' The XXth Century: Shanghai, volume 5, no. 1, July 1943, p. 58 available online at: https://web.archive.org/web/20110703164216/http://libweb.hawaii.edu/libdept/russian/XX/PDF/6-Volume5.pdf

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Loehr, Max American art historians 1988 deaths 1903 births University of Michigan faculty 20th-century American historians American male non-fiction writers 20th-century American male writers