Collectors

Burmese art also appealed to the many foreigners working in the country. Significant collections have been formed in the United States during the past one hundred and fifty years. Both of the collections of the Denison University and the Center for Burma Studies were formed by United States citizens visiting and working as missionaries, scholars, and diplomats in Burma in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Collectors of Burmese art were originally colonials and missionaries, but after independence in 1948, diplomats and scholars predominated. The interest each group took in Burmese society and its religion, and the relationships between the Burmese and people from the United States is often expressed through the kinds of objects collected. Missionaries primarily gathered tourist type materials or had objects produced for western functions, e.g. lacquer objects or silver sugar bowls decorated with Burmese motifs. Diplomats and scholars expressed a greater interest in items that would have been used by the Burmese themselves, though not to the exclusion of other pieces.