ART OF THANKS
GRATEFUL IMMIGRANTS DONATE $1.5 M CHINESE COLLECTION TO UW'S CHAZEN
To immigrants Simon and Rosemary Chen, donating their $1.5 million collection of modern Chinese art to the University of Wisconsin's Chazen Museum seemed a simple act of loyalty, fairness and gratitude.
"We like America, and we like Madison," says Simon, a UW alumnus and successful entrepreneur who is 83 and about to retire in the coming weeks. "We got everything here, our education and our kids. We immigrated, and we want to be a part of the USA."
His wife shares his sentiments, in particular about Madison and the UW.
"We consider Madison our home and have benefited a lot from the education at the UW," she says, explaining that all four of their children started college at the UW. Two daughters graduated from the UW, while a son and another daughter transferred to complete their studies.
"That's how we decided to donate to the Chazen," Rosemary adds. "This way, the public will be able to enjoy our art."
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From exiles to art collectors: The journey of the Chens and their art collection is a long tale of hard work and persistence.
It is also an ironic story, since their acquisition of Chinese art began with abandoning it.
The year was 1950, and Simon's family fled mainland China after the Communists defeated the Nationalists for control of the world's most populous nation.
Simon's father, leaving all his art behind except for two or three pieces he carried in a trunk, went first to Taiwan and then, in 1952, to Chicago, where eventually he got a job at the Field Museum.
While leaving China, young Simon Chen, who had just completed his college studies in Shanghai, encountered Rosemary Ho.
"We met on a slow boat from China," he likes to quip.
In the early 1950s, Rosemary completed her undergraduate studies in chemistry at the now-defunct Barat College in Lake Forest, Ill., while Simon pursued his doctorate in mechanical engineering at the UW. Rosemary came to Madison to take summer courses at the UW, and the two married, becoming naturalized citizens in the early 1960s. Rosemary worked at the McArdle Cancer Laboratory on the UW campus, stayed home to raise their children and then worked as a vice president in her husband's consulting company, Power and Energy International (PEI).
Simon frequently went back to Taiwan as part of an effort to industrialize the new island nation and also traveled around the world. As he did so, Simon met artists and bought pieces mostly through relatives and friends, rather than dealers.
The couple continued to move around the Midwest. Simon worked 17 years in Chicago for International Harvester, then worked for diesel engine maker Fairbanks Moss in Beloit, where in 1980 he founded PEI. In 1988, he opened his own research laboratory in Madison. Tired of long commutes, the couple relocated PEI to Madison in 1990 and then moved themselves here from Delavan.
* * *
Paths cross: In the 1980s Simon, Rosemary and Rosemary's father, who also owned some Chinese art, visited the Chazen, then known as the Elvehjem, and agreed they would combine and donate their individual art collections.
Also around that time, in 1991, the museum mounted a breakthrough exhibit, the first outside China, for the Chinese dissident artist Xu Bing. Xu went on to an international career and to receive a MacArthur "genius" grant.
"That show put us on the map," says UW Chinese art Professor Julia Murray.
About three years ago, Murray started working with the Chens, serving as a go-between for the museum since she had the specialized knowledge of Chinese art, history and language to assess the importance of the collection.
In the end, she determined that the art would indeed provide a valuable addition to the Chazen's permanent collection and the start of a Chinese art collection that would serve both the public and students.
Chazen director Russell Panczenko says the Chens' donation will be the first major step toward building a collection of modern and contemporary Chinese art, a pioneering gift that will become a centerpiece of the museum's expanded Asian gallery that will be housed in the new addition that is set to open in early 2011.
"We're very grateful to them," he says. "Without donations from people like the Chens, we wouldn't be the museum we are."
Last year the Chens gave a first installment - appraised at more than $1 million, Simon says - of about 100 art works plus many art books with reproductions and prints to the Chazen Museum and the Kohler Art Library located in the same building.
The Chens have traveled back to China many times since it started to open up after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, and they always bought contemporary Chinese art to bring home. Simon, who is writing a book about his experiences, says he has seen major economic and cultural changes in his homeland.
"The leaders are still all Communists, but they now practice capitalism," Simon says. "Art very much goes where the current political situation goes. Now it's capitalism and it's free. You can see all kinds of art, and it doesn't involve too much politics."
Though ill health and old age have probably put an end to their traveling and collecting, their generosity will continue on in the future.
The Chens are currently downsizing, as they prepare to move from a large house on the city's north side into a smaller apartment in the retirement community of Middleton Glen.
"We're not finished yet," Rosemary says, adding that in the next few years they will donate the rest of their collection, which is valued at about $500,000, according to Simon.
The Chazen's Panczenko says he understands why the museum will have to wait for the rest of the collection.
"Some people store their art away, but the Chens really live with it," Panczenko says. "They didn't want to donate what they still want to look at."
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