Robert J. Poor

Professor

Office: 358 Heller Hall

Office Hours - Fall 2009

On Leave

Phone: (612) 624-4396
Fax: (612) 626-8679

During his 30 years at the University of Minnesota, Robert J. Poor has taught classes in Chinese and Japanese Painting, Japanese Prints, Asian Ceramics, Indian Art, Connoisseurship, his specialty, Chinese Bronzes as well as courses in Theories and Methods in Art History. His initial interest in Asian art was sparked by frequent childhood visits to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and then confirmed during a year spent living in the Kyoto-Nara area in Japan while in the military. Upon returning from Japan he received a MA in Art History from Boston University and went on for a PhD at the University of Chicago.

His published works include catalogs of the Arthur M. Sackler Collection of Chinese Bronzes, The Asian Antiquities in the Honolulu Academy of Fine Arts, Ancient Chinese Bronzes in the Collection of the University of Chicago and several exhibition catalogs of Modern Japanese Prints, Jade, Indian Sculpture and Far Eastern Art in Minnesota Collections. He has published articles in English and Chinese in several of the better-known periodicals in his field. In his most recent articles Dr. Poor has identified, through the use of computer assisted studies, a single Bronze Age artist who was active in ancient China some three thousand years ago. His recent contributions to the study of ancient art and mathematics have been published in American, Europe, the Republic of China (Taiwan) and the People’s Republic of China in Chinese. Dr. Poor recently participated in the inaugural ceremonies marking the opening of the Sackler Museum in Beijing and works with archaeological and museum agencies on the Chinese mainland. He has lectured throughout the United States and in the Far East. In 1973 he was an invited guest of the People’s Republic of China. His delegation of ten American scholars was one of the first to visit China following President Nixon’s normalization of relations between the United States and China. Dr. Poor’s reactions to that trip were featured for a week on National Public Radio.

Over the years, Dr. Poor has been an active participant in the community where Asian affairs are concerned. He served as a Consultant in Asian Art at the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts and the Minnesota Museum of Art and he has published exhibition catalogs and scholarly notices on their collections. He was a charter member of the Midwest China Study Center and has also served on the board of the State Arts Council.

Currently, Dr. Poor’s love of things Asian has led him into the art of Bonsai and he has served on the board of the Minnesota Bonsai Society. After garnering a few ribbons at the State Fair he was encouraged to collect and style more than 100 miniatures trees and he has founded a special group called the Friends of Penjing, which is devoted to the study of the Chinese form of bonsai. Dr. Poor was commissioned to create three Chinese style bonsai that were prominently displayed in the Chinese garden constructed in the Astor Court at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and given full-page illustrations in the catalog of the exhibition, Sacred Mountains in Chinese Art. He is currently cataloging a major collection of Ancient Chinese Art scheduled to be exhibited in several museums of the United States.

Besides his scholarly writings on ancient bronzes, Dr. Poor is currently researching and writing on “Japanese and Chinese Gardens in North America” and “Picturing Death,” a study of art dealing with the Holocaust that will be published by Syracuse University Press in the Fall of 2004.

Dr. Poor works with students from all quarters of the university and most especially with practicing artists and art historians. Dr. Poor’s former students serve as curators of several major American museums or as university professors.

Site last modified on September 3, 2009

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