Scope and Contents

The Paul Singer papers measure 23 linear feet and date from circa 1880s to 1997. Materials include biographical documents, correspondence, writings and notes, exhibition and symposium files, travel files, personal art collection records, personal business records, printed material, artwork, artifacts, and photographs.

Biographical materials document Paul Singer's life in Vienna, Austria and in the United States. Scattered biographical documentation concerning Singer's wife, Eva Geyer, is also included. Correspondence files show the many relationships Singer maintained with art auctions and art dealers, Asian art colleagues, and various museums and universities in an effort to continuously expand and exhibit his collection. Topics also include requests for loans and viewings of Singer's art collection; consultations about other art objects; auction and sales offers; and his unpublished collection catalog project. Writings and notes include drafts of articles, essays, Singer's memoirs, and Singer's unpublished collection catalog drafts. As reflected within exhibition and symposium files, items from Singer's collection were included in several exhibitions over the years, many at the Asia House Gallery and China Institute of America, and a symposium held in his honor at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in 1990, "New Perspectives on Chu Culture during the Eastern Zhou Period." The papers also include various materials documenting Singer's international travels, especially to China from 1979 onward.

Personal art collection records document various Singer collection purchases and sales and include invoices, receipts, shipping documents, appraisal and laboratory testing results, scattered loan agreements, and Arthur M. Sackler Foundation and Purchase Fund documentation. Personal business records include Singer's personal financial files, legal files, and estate papers. Also found within the papers are printed materials, a sketchbook and sketches by others, two picture frames, and a bronze bust of Paul Singer by David Cregeen. Personal photographs depict Paul Singer and his friends and family through snapshots, portraits, vintage photographs, and one album, and primarily document Singer's life in Austria. Also included are images of Singer's apartment showing his collection as a whole, as well as various social events. Photographs of works of art, both within Singer's collection and from other sources, constitute the bulk of the photographs found within the papers and include four photograph albums. However, researchers should note that prints, slides, and negatives of works of art are as yet largely unsorted.

Arrangement

The collection is arranged as 11 series.

Biographical / Historical

Paul Singer (1904-1997) was a collector of Chinese art and neuropsychiatrist active in New York.

Born in Pressburg, Hungary in 1904, Singer grew up in Vienna, Austria where he studied medicine and developed his lifelong interest in Chinese art. He began his studies in 1921 at the Realgymnasium in Vienna, becoming a neuropsychiatrist in 1929 at the University of Vienna. He and his wife, actress Eva Geyer (1907-1975), fled Austria in 1938. After staying briefly in London, they arrived in New York in 1939 where Singer frequented art dealer shops, such as C. T. Loo and Ralph Chait, auction houses, and thrift stores. Singer met Arthur M. Sackler (1913-1987) at a Sotheby's auction in 1957. After Singer's wife's death in 1975, Sackler and Singer entered an agreement whereby Sackler would pay to support Singer's collecting and Singer's collection would go to Sackler upon his death.

Galleries and museums around the country displayed works from Singer's collection, and in 1965, Singer and Max Loehr (1903-1988) co-curated Relics of Ancient China (1965) at Asia House Gallery in New York. The Chinese Institute in New York held several exhibitions showing pieces from his collection, two of which included: Early Chinese Gold and Silver (1971) and Early Chinese Miniatures (1977), for which he wrote the catalogs. In honor of Singer's eighty-fifth birthday in April 1990, the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery held a symposium, "New Perspectives on Chu Culture during the Eastern Zhou Period," displaying a select number of objects from his collection and dedicating the published volume of presented papers to Paul Singer. In addition to curating and collecting, Singer also published scholarly articles on Chinese art in journals such as Archives of Asian Art and Oriental Art, and was senior consultant to the Far Eastern Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Max Loehr (1903-1988) began constructing a comprehensive catalog of Paul Singer's collection in 1965, sending entries to Singer as he and his colleagues completed them. After Loehr's death, Thomas Lawton (1931- ) took over much of the Singer collection catalog project, hoping for completion in time for the Symposium in 1990, but the catalog was never published.

Paul Singer died in New Providence, New Jersey in 1997.