Richard Douglas Lane

Richard Lane (1926–2002) was an American scholar, author, collector, and dealer of Japanese art. He lived in Japan for much of his life, and had a long association with the Honolulu Museum of Art in Hawaii, which now holds his vast art collection.

Lane was born in Kissimmee, Florida. After graduating from high school in 1944, during World War II, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. In the Marines he trained as a Japanese translator, and served in Japan during the war. He later received a bachelor's degree from the University of Hawaii in Japanese and Chinese literature, and continued his studies at Columbia University, where he earned a master's degree and a Ph.D in 18th-century Japanese literature. In 1957, he moved to Japan, where he lived for the rest of his life.

Lane was never on a university faculty, but supported himself as an author, dealer and consultant. He was a visiting research associate at the Honolulu Museum of Art from 1957 to 1971, during which time he helped catalog the James A. Michener collection of Japanese prints. In 1960 he married physician Chiyeko Okawa; they remained married until her death in 1999. In 2002, he died intestate and without heirs in Kyoto, Japan, and the Honolulu Museum of Art purchased his collection from the Japanese judicial authorities. The Lane Collection consisted of nearly 20,000 paintings, prints and books.

From October 2008 to February 2009, the Honolulu Museum of Art exhibited a sampling of the collection under the title "Richard Lane and the Floating World". From March 2010 to June 2010, the Academy exhibited a second installment of the collection under the title "Masterpieces from the Richard Lane Collection".

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