James Cahill (art historian)
| James Francis Cahill | |
|---|---|
| Born | August 13, 1926 Fort Bragg, California |
| Died | February 14, 2014 (aged 87) Berkeley, California |
| Residence | Berkeley |
| Fields | Art history |
| Institutions |
Freer Gallery of Art University of California, Berkeley |
| Alma mater | |
| Known for | Authority on Chinese art |
| Notable awards | Charles Lang Freer Medal (2010) |
| Children | Sarah, Nicholas, Benedict, Julian |
James Francis Cahill (Chinese: 高居翰; pinyin: Gāo Jūhàn; August 13, 1926 – February 14, 2014) was an art historian, curator, collector, and professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He was considered one of the world's top authorities on Chinese art.
James Cahill was born on August 13, 1926 in Fort Bragg, California. His parents were divorced when he was two, and he lived with a number of relatives and friends. He became interested in literature and music at the Berkeley High School.
In 1943 Cahill entered the University of California, Berkeley, initially to study English, but decided to study Japanese instead because of World War II. He was later drafted into the US Army, and served as a translator in Japan and Korea from 1946 to 1948. In Asia he became interested in collecting paintings. In 1948 he returned to UC Berkeley and received a bachelor's degree in Oriental languages in 1950. He then studied art history under Max Loehr at the University of Michigan, earning his master's in 1952 and Ph.D. in 1958. In 1954 and 1955 Cahill studied at Kyoto University in Japan as a Fulbright Scholar.
Cahill worked at the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. as curator of Chinese art from 1958 to 1965, when he became a faculty member at UC Berkeley. He taught at Berkeley for 30 years, from 1965 until his retirement in 1995, after which he became professor emeritus. From the late 1950s to the 1970s, when the Western society had far less interest in Chinese art than today, Cahill was among a group of art historians who researched and cataloged Chinese paintings. In 1960 he published Chinese Painting, which became a classic text that was required reading in Chinese art history classes for decades. In 1973, he was one of the first American art historians to visit China after President Richard Nixon's historic meeting with Chairman Mao Zedong the year before.
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