Kroch exhibition showcases Asia Collections; reception today

"Treasures of the Asia Collections" is the fall exhibition now on view in the Kroch Library Gallery. Members of the campus community are invited to attend a reception in celebration of the exhibition today, Oct. 18, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m.

One of the unique items in Cornell Library's Wason Collection on East Asia is this beautifully incised jade book bearing an ancestral inscription by K'ang-hsi, the 17th-century emperor of China.

"Treasures of the Asia Collections" showcases some of the many unique items in Cornell Library's extensive Asia Collections. Through books, manuscripts, photographs and other documents, the exhibition highlights the culture and literature of countries including China, Japan, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines.

Highlights of the exhibition include palm leaf and mulberry leaf manuscripts, a wooden model of a Balinese festival, a 15th-century Chinese atlas, a 16th-century Chinese encyclopedia and 17th-century jade book, a photograph of Mahatma Gandhi, travelogues and sketchbooks from the 17th through 19th centuries and a selection of materials from the Maeda Collection, which features rare early postwar Japanese publications and translations of European literature.

Cornell pioneered the teaching of Asian studies, with a one-year course in Chinese offered as early as 1870. The university's first Japanese student came in 1870, the first Chinese student graduated in 1901 and six Indian students entered in 1905. After 1900, international students attended in increasing numbers, and many Cornellians went to Asia to work and travel. A department of Chinese Studies, created in 1944, was later broadened to Far Eastern Studies, including Southeast Asia and South Asia.

The strength of the library's collections parallel the university's academic developments. The South Asia Collection was established in 1868 when Cornell's first president, Andrew Dickson White, purchased the 5,000-volume library of the German Sanskritist and philologist Franz Bopp. In the early 1900s, William Elliott Griffis, an Ithaca minister, gave the library his collection of some 2,000 Japanese-language books. Charles W. Wason, an 1876 graduate, bequeathed the library more than 9,000 volumes on China and the Chinese that he had acquired in eight years of intensive collecting. The East Asia Collection was later named in his honor.

Cornell's strengths in Southeast Asia date back to the 1950s when the library agreed to acquire at least one copy of every publication of research value produced in Southeast Asian countries. Grants from the Rockefeller, Ford and Mellon foundations have created endowments that provide funding for the curatorial staff and acquisitions. In 1977, the Southeast Asia Collection was named in honor of John M. Echols, professor of modern languages and linguistics, who devoted 30 years to the development of the collection.

Cornell Library now holds one of North America's largest and best-integrated collections on Asia. Located in the Carl A. Kroch Library, the collections number more than a million printed volumes and chronicle the history and growth of cultures throughout the Asian continent since the beginning of civilization. Rare books, manuscripts and visual materials relating to Asia are housed in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, also in Kroch Library.

The exhibition will be on view until Dec. 21 in the Kroch Library Gallery, Level 2B. Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday-Friday, and 1 to 5 p.m. Saturday. Visit http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/exhibits.