Doris and Peter F. Drucker Photographs

Photographs created to document the Sansō Collection (山荘コレクション), a private collection of Japanese paintings acquired from the late 1950's to the early 1990's by collectors and co-trustees Doris and Peter F. Drucker. The works, dating from the 14th to the 19th century, include masterworks from the Kamakura period, suiboku paintings of the Muromachi and Momoyama periods, zenga paintings from the Edo period, and paintings by masters of the nanga or literati school. The collection was acquired by an unnamed Japanese corporation in 2015 and entrusted to the Chiba City Museum of Art (Chiba, Japan) on extended loan.

Each photograph is captioned with artist, date, description, medium, mount format, dimensions, and an assigned number. Some captions also contain provenance, publication, and exhibition history. Additionally, there are five letters from the Druckers to the Freer Gallery concerning the deaccession of works from the collection. The object photographs were taken between the 1970s and 1990s, while the correspondence dates from 1974, 1979, 1982, and 1983.

Peter Ferdinand Drucker (1909-2005) was born in Vienna, Austria. He worked as a financial reporter in Frankfurt, Germany as he pursued a degree in public and international law. After receiving his degree in 1931, he wrote two articles which were banned by the Nazi government, one on conservative philosopher Friedrich Julius Stahl and one titled "The Jewish Question in Germany." Fearing for his safety, he moved to London, where he worked as an economist for the London Banking House.

In London, Peter met Doris. Doris (1911-2014) was born in Koenigstein, Germany and later moved to Paris, before coming to London to study at the London School of Economics. The two of them immigrated to the United States in 1937, where Peter worked as a consultant to major American businesses such as General Motors. He also became a professor of philosophy and politics at Bennington College, and after the success of his book The Concept of the Corporation, he became a professor of management at New York University. This book is sometimes credited with creating the field of consulting, and after publishing many more books on the subject, Peter came to be known as the father of modern management.

Doris, meanwhile, worked as a scientific translator, market researcher, and technical patent agent, and in 1963, she became the first woman to earn a masters in physics from Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey. She also helped edit many of her husband's books.

The Druckers' interest in Japanese art began in London in the 1930s. Peter credits a 1934 traveling exhibit of Japanese paintings for inspiring his interest in the subject, although the Druckers would not go to Japan themselves until the 1950s. During WWII, Peter worked in Washington, DC, and he often spent his free time at the Freer Gallery of Art, where he studied Japanese paintings both on display and in storage, with the assistance of the staff. In 1959, the Druckers began to collect Japanese Kamakura, Muromachi and Momoyama, and Edo period works, particularly suiboku-ga ink paintings, zenga paintings, and sumi-e landscape and still life ink paintings of nanga painters.

From the 1970s to the 1990s, the Druckers kept in contact with the Freer Gallery and would regularly send photos of additions to their collection, along with notices of deaccessions. There were also talks of donating the Drucker Collection to the Freer, which was not possible at the time due to restrictions Charles Lang Freer had placed on the museum.

In 1971, the Druckers moved to California, where Peter became a professor at Claremont Graduate University. There, Peter taught management, while also lecturing about Japanese art at Pomona College, which was part of the Claremont Colleges system. Claremont Graduate University's Drucker School of Management is named after him. Meanwhile, Doris worked as an independent contractor doing market research for manufacturers of scientific instruments, and in 1996, she founded the company RSQ, which manufactured voice volume monitoring devices. She also wrote a memoir published by the University of Chicago Press in 2004.

Peter cited Japanese art as an influence on his understanding of Japan as a country and on his writings about Japanese economics. His interest in Japan led to his 1971 Harvard Business Review article "What We Can Learn From Japanese Management," and his later 1981 article "Behind Japan's Success." He also discussed his views on art and economics in the book Drucker on Asia: A Dialogue Between Peter Drucker and Isao Nakauchi. Additionally, he contributed to catalogues for exhibitions featuring works from the Drucker Collection, such as Song of the Brush: Japanese Paintings from the Sansō Collection at the Seattle Art Museum and The Zen Expressionists: Painting of the Japanese Counterculture, 1600-1800 at Montgomery Art Gallery. He was also a supporter of the Japan Society, based in New York City, and received their 1996 Japan Society Award for his contributions to better US-Japan relations.

The Druckers named their collection the "Sansō Collection" (山荘コレクション), meaning "mountain villa" or "mountain cottage," and they studied the art within their collection extensively. Although the year of acquisition is not noted, each photograph is captioned with the artist, approximate date of creation, description, medium, mount format, dimensions, and an assigned number. Some captions also contain provenance, publication, and exhibition history, along with notes on authentication. Additionally, some photographs are noted as "ex" Drucker Collection works, which indicate that the works were deaccessioned from the collection.

Following the deaths of Peter and Doris in 2005 and 2014 respectively, the collection was kept within the Drucker family. However, after an exhibition of the collection at the Chiba City Museum of Art (Chiba, Japan) in spring 2015, it was purchased by an unnamed Japanese corporation. This corporation then entrusted the collection to the Chiba City Museum of Art on extended loan. All 197 works in the collection as of 2015 were included in this transaction and have been subsequently displayed in various exhibitions at the Chiba City Museum of Art.

FSA A.09

Drucker, Peter F. (Peter Ferdinand), 1909-2005

Drucker, Doris, 1911-2014

Drucker, Doris, 1911-2014

Drucker, Peter F. (Peter Ferdinand), 1909-2005

USA -- California -- Claremont

Painting, Japanese -- Kamakura-Momoyama, 1185-1600

Painting, Japanese -- Edo period, 1600-1868

Ink painting

Painting, Zen

Peter F. Drucker donated the Doris and Peter F. Drucker Photographs to the Archives in 1991.

Doris and Peter F. Drucker Photographs

Gift of Peter F. Drucker, 1991.

Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives

Collection descriptions

Archival materials

Photographs

Doris and Peter F. Drucker Photographs, FSA.A.09. National Museum of Asian Art Archives. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Gift of Peter F. Drucker, 1991.

Arranged by object number assigned by Druckers.

Chiba City Museum of Art. ドラッカー・コレクション珠玉の水墨画 : 「マネジメントの父」が愛した日本の美. Masterpieces from the Sansō Collection: Japanese paintings collected by Peter F. and Doris Drucker, ed. Kawai Masatomo and Matsuo Tomoko. Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppansha, 2015.

Seattle Art Museum. Song of the Brush: Japanese Paintings from the Sansō Collection, ed. John M. Rosenfeld. Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 1979.

Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts. 水墨画名作展 : ドラッカーコレクション [Suibokuga meisaku ten: Dorakkā korekushon]. Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Shinbunsha, 1986.

Drucker, Peter F. "A View of Japan through Japanese Art," in The Ecological Vision: Reflections on the American Condition. New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 1993.

Drucker, Peter F. and Isao Nakauchi. Drucker on Asia: A Dialogue Between Peter Drucker and Isao Nakauchi. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1997.

Photographs

Collection is open for research.