NEW YORK, NY.- Asia Week New York, in partnership with The Winter Show, present J.P. Morgan: A Collector’s Legacy, an online webinar, featuring a distinguished panel of scholars and experts including Charlotte Eyerman, Jean Strouse, Colin B. Bailey, Linda H. Roth, and Steven Chait, each of whom will explore a specific point of interest about the larger-than-life financial tycoon and collector. The presentation will be held on Wednesday, January 26 at 5:00 p.m. EST. To register: click here.

John Pierpont Morgan was not only one of the most powerful figures in finance with his name atop one of the world’s leading banking and investment firms, but also a prodigious collector, whose legacy resides in the masterpieces from his extraordinary collection that are now highlights of important museum and private collections throughout the United States. The many facets of his passion for collecting, and the story behind his Asian, ancient, and Western art acquisitions will be discussed by our notable panel of scholars and experts.

The Panel:




Charlotte Eyerman, who will moderate the discussion, is the Director and Chief Curator, JP Morgan Chase Art Collection in New York City. She brings over 20 years of experience and leadership in museums, the private and nonprofit sectors, and academia. A specialist in modern and contemporary art, with a significant exhibition and publication record, her expertise is in building collections, developing exhibitions, and forging relationships with artists, collectors, museums, and the trade nationally and internationally.

Jean Strouse is the eminent American biographer and author of Morgan, American Financier and Alice James, A Biography with many essays and reviews published in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and other notable publications. Ms. Strouse will give a brief biographical sketch about J.P. Morgan in her discussion of Who Was J.P. Morgan? Acquiring art on an imperial scale at the turn of the 20th century, both for his own collections and for institutions he supported, Morgan seemed to want all the beautiful things in the world. His campaign reflected the voracious eclecticism of the American Gilded Age, a lifetime of organized self-indulgence, a personal and patriotic project, a sense of noblesse oblige. He was called an American Pharaoh, the Napoleon of Wall Street, a sphinx.

Colin B. Bailey is Director, The Morgan Library & Museum, a position he has held since 2015. Mr. Bailey will present Building the Bookman's Paradise, which will introduce J.P. Morgan as a collector, exploring his early collecting activities and his decision to commission Charles McKim to create the Morgan Library in 1906. Among the many initiatives Bailey has spearheaded are the exterior restoration of J. Pierpont Morgan’s Library, the architectural heart of the institution designed by the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White; the establishment of the endowed position of Sherman Fairchild Head of the Thaw Conservation Center; and the inauguration of the Belle da Costa Greene Curatorial Fellowships, created for promising scholars from historically underrepresented communities in the curatorial and special collections fields.

Linda H. Roth is the Director of Special Curatorial Projects and Charles C. and Eleanor Lamont Cunningham Curator of European Decorative Arts, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. In her segment titled, Objects of “Pleasure and Instruction:” J. Pierpont Morgan's Legacy in Hartford, Ms. Roth introduces the legacy left by J.P. Morgan to his native Hartford. His love for the city in which he was born and raised led to a transformative legacy. He orchestrated a major expansion of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, and, in his will, directed his son, Jack (J. P. Morgan Jr.), to share his art collection with Hartford’s citizens.

Steven Chait is the President of Ralph M. Chait Galleries, Inc., which was founded by his grandfather, Ralph M. Chait, in 1910. It is the oldest specialist gallery dealing in fine antique Chinese porcelains and works of art in the United. States. In his talk, The J.P. Morgan Collection of Chinese Porcelains, Mr. Chait will discuss J.P. Morgan’s published collection of Chinese porcelains, which was housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art until the estate sold it post 1913. He will give an overview of the types of porcelains in the collection, their history and what happened to them after Morgan’s passing.