A robber baron’s granddaughter and the leading collector of Japanese art in America has died. The New York Times puts her collection in context:

“Mary’s collection really would give the Met the most, or one of the most — let’s be modest — comprehensive collections of Asian art outside of Asia,” Maxwell Hearn, the Douglas Dillon Curator in charge of Asian Art at the museum, said in an interview on Monday. […]

The collection spans five millenniums, from the art of early Japanese cultures around 3000 B.C. through that of the Edo period of the 17th to 19th centuries A.D. […] Assembled over half a century and exhibited throughout the world, Mrs. Burke’s collection comprises about a thousand artifacts, including paintings, prints, sculpture, textiles, lacquerware, ceramics and calligraphy, collectively worth tens of millions of dollars.

Mary Griggs Burke, Japanese Art Connoisseur, Dies at 96 (NY Times)