It is with deep sorrow that I now inform you of the passing of my awe-inspiring teacher, Professor Miyeko Murase (1924-2025). Her legacy is vast and her footprint enormous.
Always striking an elegant appearance with a refined and understated preference for European designers, she remained an impressive figure even until her sudden death on February 12th shortly before her 101st birthday. Indomitable, intimidating, yet often girlish and charming, she consistently challenged her students to meet her daunting expectations.
I was fortunate to have been accepted by her into the graduate program of Japanese art history at Columbia in 1974. Although I was there for only two years, Professor Murase unquestionably forged me into the art professional I am today.
Beyond offering the standard training in Japanese art history, her insistence on the importance of connoisseurship, both in terms of authenticity and quality, and her ability to teach those skills, have led many of her students into the world of museums. Our time working with the celebrated Mary Griggs Burke collection of Japanese paintings inspired so many of us. For me, like so many others, studying and working with the Burke collection masterworks in the flesh made a profound impression. Scores of her students, a few before my arrival but mostly those after me, have since become leading Asian art curators, scholars, art professionals, professors and even museum directors.
Sensei loved to call us the “The Columbia Mafia” and plainly considered us, collectively, to be her greatest achievement.
The study of Japanese art, to which she contributed many years of her life, will continue in perpetuity at Columbia, as she – and I emphasize that it was solely through her efforts – arranged in 1993 for the endowment of the chair, named the Takeo and Itsuko Atsumi Professor of Japanese Art. Through her important life-long relationship with Mary Burke, Columbia University also received the significant endowment for the establishment of the Mary Griggs Burke Center for Japanese Art.
For me personally, under Professor Murase’s guidance, it soon became clear that my passion lay with the discovery and promotion of the art itself rather than solely the history of the works. While she was first my teacher, after retiring following her 34 years of teaching at Columbia, she then became my client. In 1996 she was invited to become the Special Consultant to the Metropolitan Museum and while there made numerous key acquisitions in many areas of Japanese art and curated several important exhibitions; my favorite was in 2003, Turning Point: Oribe and the Arts of Sixteenth-Century Japan. Indeed it was her fascination with clay that reunited us as she acquired a number of important works for the museum. Her taste and eye remained keen and engaged even until the very end; she happily visited my stand at The Winter Show only two weeks before her passing. She proudly regaled me with news of the completion of her final curatorial project, the exhibition at Japan Society Kotobuki: Auspicious Celebrations of Japanese Art from New York Private Collections, which opens on March 13th. This lovely show, which places Sensei’s taste and eye on display, will be a fitting coda to a life richly lived and a celebration of her enduring legacy.
