Sherman Lee

In 1941, Lee was named Curator of Far Eastern Art at the Detroit Institute of Arts. His museum career was interrupted by military service in World War II. He returned to the United States in 1948. He was the Associate Director of the Seattle Art Museum and he taught at the University of Washington. In 1952, Lee began work at the Cleveland Museum of Art as Chief Curator of Oriental Art. He was named Director in 1958, and served in this capacity until 1983. He advised Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller on building their collection of Asian art. After retiring from the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1983, Lee became an adjunct professor of art history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. ==World War II==

Lieutenant Sherman Lee was activated from the United States Naval Reserve during World War II. His naval career took a turn when he was transferred in 1946 to Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFAA) in Japan. Among those serving with Lee at SCAP headquarters in Tokyo were Patrick Lennox Tierney and Laurence Sickman. == Quote ==

Speaking of his service with the Monuments Men, Lee said: We were responsible for protection of registered cultural property ... We were responsible for national parks ... We were responsible for the encouragement of the living artists and ... the democratization of Japanese museums to see that there was evenhanded fair play. == Legacy==

According to Philippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Sherman Lee "carried a lot of weight in the community of museum directors. He bought in all fields, his own particularly brilliantly, but in many different fields. He really transformed the Cleveland museum from a regional museum to a major global museum." ==Honors==

• Order of the Sacred Treasure, Japan. ==Selected works==

In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about Sherman Lee, OCLC/WorldCat encompasses roughly 100+ works in 300+ publications in 8 languages and 14,000+ library holdings. • Chinese Landscape Painting (1954) • Japanese Decorative Style (1961) • A History of Far Eastern Art (1964) • Ancient Cambodian Sculpture (1969) • The Colors of Ink: Chinese Paintings and Related Ceramics from the Cleveland Museum of Art (1974) • The Genius of Japanese Design (1981) • Reflections of Reality in Japanese Art (1983) • Past, Present, East and West (1983) == See also ==