At its December 2013 meeting, the Penn Museum’s Acquisitions Committee considered donations of 12 groups of objects, 3 collections of vintage photographs, many reels of film, and several collections of excavation records.
Among the objects accepted were three Japanese paintings: a pair of hanging scrolls in ink and light color on paper, “Two Deer beneath a Withered Tree,” and “Tree Monkeys on a Rock by a Waterfall” by Mori Sosen (1747–1821), and a gilded two-fold screen, “Deer and Azalea Blossoms,” by Mori Shūhō (1738–1823) PICTURED, generously donated by Dana Eisman Cohen, C88, and Dr. Michael E. Cohen, D89, of New York City. According to Asian Section Assistant Curator Adam Smith, the Japanese artists were brothers, and the three items therefore make an appealing ensemble. Mori Sosen is the better known of the two, and his paintings are well represented in Japanese and U.S. collections, with several examples in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Dr. Smith and Asian Section Curator Dr. Nancy Steinhardt believe the paintings to be of historical value, and an important resource for teaching Japanese Art History.