Monsieur Loo and Asian Art Collections: Life, Legacy and Ethics

The KVVAK is pleased to announce a lecture-filled afternoon on Saturday May 24 engaging in the exploration of the life and legacy of C.T. Loo (1880–1957), one of the most influential figures in the history of Asian art collecting.

C.T. Loo (1880–1957) remains a figure of fascination in the history of Asian art. His life reads like a novel—rising from humble beginnings in Zhejiang, China, to traveling with diplomat Zhang Jinjiang to France as his personal servant, reinventing himself in Paris as a cultivated tastemaker, and ultimately becoming one of the most influential dealers and connoisseurs of Asian art. Through his extensive network, he helped shape the collections of major institutions in the West, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the British Museum (London), and the Museo Nazionale d’Arte Orientale (Rome).

Operating from his Paris gallery, The Pagoda, and from his New York gallery, C.T. Loo & Company, Loo connected collectors, scholars, and institutions, shaping Western perceptions of Asian aesthetics. His network and business practices remain a subject of scholarly interest, particularly in provenance research and the ethics of collecting.

Key pieces in the Royal Asian Art Society’s (KVVAK) collection passed through his hands, as did many highlights of the Musée Guimet and other institutions around the world. This event brings together Geraldine Lenain, biographer of C.T. Loo and President of the Friends of Musée Guimet, alongside experts from the Rijksmuseum and Musée Guimet amongst others, to examine Loo’s impact while fostering a broader dialogue on the history of collecting and museum practices between France and the Netherlands.

Through keynote presentations and discussions, we will explore how Loo’s extraordinary life and work continue to shape contemporary perspectives on Asian art, museum collections, and the evolving cultural exchange between European institutions

13:45 – Walk-in & Registration

14:00 – 14:05 | Welcome Remarks by Edwin Liem, Chairman, Royal Asian Art Society in the Netherlands (KVVAK) and Menno Fitski, Head of Asian Art, Rijksmuseum

Part I – C.T. Loo: His Life and Work
14:05 – 14:45 Keynote Presentation by Géraldine Lenain – Monsieur Loo: The Life and Work of C.T. Loo
President, Friends of the Musée Guimet

Part II – C.T. Loo and the Shaping of Asian Art Museum Collections

14:45 – 15:00 | Yun Xie – The Formation of Knowledge: C.T. Loo’s Artifacts and the Scholars Who Built a Knowledge Network Across Disciplines
PhD Candidate, Department of History, Ghent University

15:00 – 15:15 | Anna A. Ślączka – C.T. Loo and South Asian Art Objects in the Collection of the Royal Asian Art Society in the Netherlands
Curator of South Asian Art, Rijksmuseum

15:15 – 15:30 | Édouard de Saint-Ours – An Archaeology of the Asian Art Market: The Loo/Caro Archive at the Villa Guimet
Curator of Photography, Musée Guimet

Part III – C.T. Loo: Influence, Ethics, and Provenance

15:30 – 16:00 | Panel Discussion & Q&A
Speakers: Géraldine Lenain, Anna A. Ślączka, Édouard de Saint-Ours, Yun Xie
Moderator: Paramita Paul – Chief Editor, The Newsletter (IIAS, Leiden University)

16:05 – 17:00 | Networking Drinks & Visit to the Asian Pavilion

• KVVAK Members: Free via the registration form
• Vereniging Rembrandt Members: Free via the registration form (fill in ‘1000’ as your membership number)
• Non-members: €12.50 (to be paid upon arrival, please use the registration form and fill in ‘0000’ as your membership number)
• Students: €5.00 (only with presentation of valid student ID, to be paid upon arrival, please use the registration form and fill in ‘0000’ as your membership number)

For more information contact Marie-Anne Souloumiac (KVVAK) through secretariaat@kvvak.nl

Please register using the form below.

Géraldine Lenain is an art historian, working for twenty-five years on several continents as a specialist in Asian arts recognized internationally on the art market. She currently lives in Brazil. She has already published Monsieur Loo, The novel of an Asian art dealer (Philippe Picquier, 2013) and The Last Maharaja of Indore (Le Seuil, 2022). She is also Chairwoman of the Friends of the Guimet Museum, Vice President of the MEP (European House of Photography) and member of the advisory board of the Adrian Cheng K11 Craft and Guild Foundation, Hong Kong.

Édouard de Saint-Ours is curator of photography at the Musée Guimet and holds a PhD in Art History (University of St Andrews, UK) and Contemporary History (Université Le Havre Normandie, France). His thesis, defended in 2024, examines the contribution of photographers and photographic images to the French colonial project in Mainland Southeast Asia before 1880. A specialist of nineteenth-century photography in Asia at large, Édouard de Saint-Ours has also researched the history of early colour processes and the Franco-British networks that fostered the development of photography in Western Europe in the mid-nineteenth century. 

Anna A. Ślączka is Curator of South Asian Art at the Rijksmuseum. She studied Sanskrit and Asian Art at Leiden University. Her doctoral thesis, defended in 2006, was a study of the consecration rites in Hindu temples. After her PhD, she worked at the International Institute of Asian Studies (IIAS) in Leiden, the École française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO) in Pondicherry, India, and at Leiden University. Her research covers Hindu ritual and art, and ritual and iconographic Sanskrit texts, and she is currently involved in a project on production and casting technology of Chola bronzes. Her most recent publication is Re-envisioning Śiva Naṭarāja: An Interdisciplinary Perspective (Brill-Hotei, Leiden-Boston, 2022).

Yun Xie is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at Ghent University, specializing in the history of printing and colonial history in the Dutch East Indies. She has a strong interest in Asian visual arts and previously studied art history at the University of Amsterdam and Utrecht University. She completed an internship with the provenance research team at the Asian Art Museum in Berlin.

Paramita Paul is Chief Editor of The Newsletter, a journal produced by the International Institute for Asian Studies at Leiden University for a worldwide readership within and beyond academia. She holds a PhD from Leiden University, and has taught at Leiden University and the University of Amsterdam. Her research interests include premodern and modern Buddhist art, and select publications include “Into the New Wonderhouse: Visual Images and World-Making in a Buddhist Temple in Chinatown Amsterdam” (Journal of Chinese Overseas, 2018), and “The Eccentrics of Istanbul: Chan, Art, and Cross-Asian Networks in the Ming” (Ming Studies, 2018). She also serves on the editorial board of the Rijksmuseum journal Aziatische Kunst.