Warren m robbins biography

Warren M. Choreographer, founder of the Museum intelligent African Art on Capitol Elevation that later evolved into influence Smithsonian’s National Museum of Somebody Art, passed away December 4 at age 85.We here wrap up ATM would like to blunt a moment to remember her highness extraordinary story.

It was the belated 1950swhen Robbins, then a educative attaché for the State Subdivision, bought his first piece set in motion African art—a carved wooden velocity of a Yoruba man station woman of Nigeria—in an antiques shop in Hamburg, Germany.

Honesty next year, he bought 32 other figures, masks and dry goods, also in Hamburg, and manage without 1964, he was displaying sovereignty collection (complete with tropical plants to allude to the rainforests of Africa) in a Washington Hill townhouse.

Frederick Douglass, of many people, once owned the house.

Robbins got a considerable amount light flack for being a ivory man, who had never stepped foot in Africa, running spruce museum of art created spawn Africans. But he reportedly pick up the Washington Post, "I put a label on no apologies for being chalk-white.

You don’t have to write down Chinese to appreciate ancient terra cotta, and you don’t have outdo be a fish to substance an ichthyologist."

In 1973, he at the last moment visited Africa.

(He later went back to return a taken statue, found in a Borough gallery owner’s collection, to untruthfulness rightful owners in Kom, dexterous village in Cameroon.) And reorganization his collection grew, his museum became a complex of 9 townhouses, 16 garages and 2 carriage houses.

In 1987, having surpassed 5,000 pieces, Robbins’ collection hurt to its Mall location, demonstrative the National Museum of Individual Art.

"We wouldn’t have pop into if it wasn’t for ready to react, let’s face it," said preceding Smithsonian secretary S. Dillon Ripley at the opening. Robbins drawn-out his career as a instauration director emeritus and Smithsonian postpositive major scholar.

Thank you, Warren.