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See Buddhist Art Exhibit
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Profile of John Kuiper's Background as an Art Collector |
Collecting art and antiques has been my passion and hobby for many years, but it is not my profession. I am not an art dealer nor do I have formal academic qualifications in the fine arts. My professional life has been quite different, with two B.Sc. degrees in Physics and Economics from MIT and a Ph.D. in Engineering from Stanford University. Much of my career was as an international consulting engineer for the planning of large electric power projects, and in the last thirteen years of my career from 1991 until 2004, I worked in the energy projects division of the Asian Development Bank, at their headquarters office in Manila, Philippines. There I was responsible for preparing and administering large loans for power projects in Asia, and supervising studies related to the planning and feasibility of power projects and for improving electric utility management practices and reforms. I took early retirement in 2004 so that I could move back to Canada and spend more time on my other hobbies and interests. My purpose is establishing this album is to share photos and descriptions of my Philippine tribal art collection with others interested in this subject. Otherwise, this collection would simply remain in storage, locked up, unseen and unkown by all other people. Until recently I had not sold any objects from my tribal art collection, except for two New Guinea wood carvings that I sold at Sotheby's NY in 2006. One of these came from the Nelson Rockefeller collection and both had been purchased from Sotheby's in 1981, so they had a good provenance. In the last two years I sold a few items of Philippine tribal art to website visitors who enquired if they could buy them. Now I have decided I am willing to sell most of them after all, since I do not have room at home to display them. And my initial plan to sell or even donate most of my Philippine tribal art collection to a museum will probably not succeed. So I have decided that I am willing to sell most of these items. Serious collectors can enquire about prices at Philippine.bululs@gmail.com I will donate 25% of all sale proceeds to charitable projects in the Philippines. Recently these donations have been to help victims of Typhoon Odette that swept though the southern Philippines in December 2021 and caused severe damage and devastation to many houses there. I have exhibited some parts of my Asian art collection in recent years. In 2010, I proposed a special exhibit of Buddhist art based on my collection at the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver, Canada. This proposal was agreed to and an exhibit called Visions of Enlightenment - Buddhist Art at the Museum of Anthropology, was finally organized and held for five months from May until September 2012. Half of the objects in this exhibit came from my collection, and the rest from museums and other private collections in British Columbia. Photos of this MoA exhibit can be seen at: Buddhist Art Exhibit I was also on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Society for Asian Arts from March 2012 until March 2016. The CSAA is a non-profit society based in Vancouver that promotes public events related to the Asian arts and sponsors or helps to organize exhibits of Asian arts. |
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