Harry A. Franklin (1903–1983) Harry A. Franklin (1903–1983) Paul Lewis Harry Franklin alongside his wife Ruth circa 1940s. Always interested in art and with a natural curiosity, Harry Franklin dared, as the scholar Tamara Northern observed, to step over the shadow of his own culture and appreciate the art of a range of cultures—from the Chiefdoms of the Grasslands of Cameroon to the remote villages along the Sepik River. Franklin was first introduced to African sculpture in the late 1930s by the artist and collector Chaim Gross, whose work he collected. After a successful career as an executive at a manufacturer of luxury textiles, Franklin, who was not inclined to a quiet retirement, resolved to pursue his passion and embark on a career as an art dealer. His former career had given him occasion to travel to the Far East, and, when he opened his gallery in 1955, he initially focused on Asian art, but African and Oceanic art increasingly took precedence, together with a certain amount of Pre-Columbian and Native American art. Franklin’s nascent interest in Oceanic art was encouraged when he met Paul Wingert, a Professor of Art History at Columbia University in New York. Together with Ralph Linton, Wingert curated Arts of the South Seas, the first significant exhibition of Oceanic art in the United States, which took place at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1946. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, many objects were emerging from the Sepik River basin, as well as the more remote regions of the Abelam area and the Upper Karawari River. For a time, Franklin worked with Oscar Meyer, who, together with Bruce Lawes, field collected an enormous number of objects from the Sepik region. Franklin also financed several scientific expeditions to New Guinea, sponsoring botanists in return for access to any objects they could find. He also acquired objects from George Kennedy, the scientist and field collector who first travelled to New Guinea in the late 1950s and who was particularly active in the Abelam area and the Upper Karawari River. Throughout the 1960s, Franklin loaned many of the New Guinea objects to museum exhibitions, helping to develop public interest and appreciation for this material beyond the confines of his gallery. In 1961, he loaned objects to an exhibition entitled Art of the South Seas at the Denver Art Museum; among them was the Iatmul mai mask in the present catalogue (No. 7). Franklin acquired a sizable collection from the Denver Art Museum the following year, including objects the museum had obtained from the Australian Museum, Sydney, from the Etnografiska Museet, Stockholm, and from the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford. Inevitably private collectors were also the source of many items; the Maori wahaika presented here (No. 1) is one of several works that Franklin acquired in the late 1960s from Dr. Justin G. Stein, a collector of arms and armor with a taste for Polynesian weapons. Perhaps the boldest decision of Franklin’s career was his acquisition of the Bangwa lefem figure of an anyi, widely known as the “Bangwa Queen,” from the Helena Rubinstein collection, at Sotheby Parke-Bernet in New York in 1966. Against considerable competition, Franklin acquired this legendary sculpture for a record-breaking price of $29,000. Franklin bought several other important objects in the Rubinstein auction, in particular some of Rubinstein’s greatest Oceanic sculptures: a Maori tekoteko that Rubinstein had acquired at the 1931 auction of the collections of André Breton and Paul Eluard; a haunting Vanuatu mask; and an exquisite ‘u‘u from the Marquesas Islands. Although Franklin’s reputation was already well established by the time of the Rubinstein auction, his acquisition of the “Bangwa Queen” confirmed his position and ensured that he had entrée to the most notable figures of the European trade. Valerie Franklin recalled visiting Charles Ratton with her father in the late 1960s and acquiring the precontact Blackwater River suspension hook presented here (No. 12). Following an introduction from Ratton, Franklin acquired objects from Arthur Speyer III, including the Bangwa lefem statue of a chief known as the “Bangwa King,” which had been collected at the same time as the “Bangwa Queen.” Speyer also sold Franklin items collected in New Guinea by German colonial officials in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Ludwig Bretschneider in Munich was another source of objects from old German collections, including the Sawos mask presented here (No. 8). The late George R. Ellis, former director of the Honolulu Academy of Arts and a friend of the Franklins, recalled that there was always a degree of separation between the stock of the Franklin gallery and Harry’s private collection; items might occasionally move from the former to the latter, but not the other way around. Favorite objects from the family’s private collection were often loaned to exhibitions with the designation “Mr. and Mrs. Harry A. Franklin,” while items loaned from stock mentioned the gallery’s name. At heart, Harry always remained a collector. A favorite object from the private collection was the Abelam ancestral spirit figure presented here (No. 11). First exhibited over sixty years ago, for many years this archaic sculpture was a watchful presence in Franklin’s Beverly Hills home. Harry’s legacy was continued by his daughter Valerie, who continued to run the Franklin Gallery for several years after his retirement. Valerie donated many pieces from the Franklin collection to the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, and she was equally generous in placing other works on loan to museums. In her house in Los Angeles, Valerie continued to live with many items that had once decorated the family home in Beverly Hills. On a 17th-century Spanish table in the great room, the Helena Rubinstein ‘u‘u reposed in its Inagaki stand, watched over by the Iatmul mai mask, while, in the entrance hall, the archaic Abelam figure stood sentinel once more.
