History of the Minassian Collection
by Alanna M. Benham
Mrs. Minassian's interest in Persian and Islamic art was lifelong. Her father, Kirkor Minassian, was an active dealer in Islamic and Near-Eastern antiquities with galleries in New York and Paris. Mr. Minassian was a frequent traveler, making many trips across the Atlantic between Europe and America. He frequented the Near East and India, buying artifacts there for importation and sale into America and European countries. Family photographs document the exterior of the galleries and Mr. Minassian interacting with Persian art dealers on buying trips to the Middle East in the early part of the century. Though the Minassian family closed its New York gallery in 1923, Mr. Minassian remained an active dealer in the New York art market until the end of the decade. He held several public auctions at the Anderson Galleries, Park Avenue, New York. Mr. Minassian maintained an extensive personal art collection which focused upon Islamic ceramics, sculptural objects, textiles, and manuscripts. Though he collected various antiquities from all corners of the ancient world, Mr. Minassian was recognized as a true connoisseur of Near Eastern art. His collection of miniature paintings was of premiere quality. Among his works, he counted paintings by the master Bihzan and calligraphy by masters Kemal ed-Din Mir Ali Husseini, Mir Amad, and Fakhiri, among others. He owned a number of Qur'anic leaves written in kufic script, some as old as the tenth century.
Mr. Minassian was very generous with his personal collection, lending large portions of it for public exhibition on several occasions. Many of his items were on display at the Exhibition of Masterpieces of Mohammedan Art in Munich in 1910. Approximately twenty Minassian miniature paintings were lent to Frederik Robert Martin for reproduction in his illustrated book Miniature Paintings of Persia, India, and Turkey, Vlll through XVIII Centuries, published in 1912. Mr. Minassian sponsored an extensive traveling exhibition of Near Eastern art in the mid-1920s. In 1923 he assembled a show at the Art Institute of Chicago. In the spring of 1925 that show traveled to the Morgan Memorial Museum in Connecticut, where it remained until October 1, 1925. He lent a number of leaves to the Brooklyn Museum for a show in 1931.
In 1934 Mr. Minassian donated many of his finest miniature paintings and manuscripts to the Library of Congress. This gift constituted an important contribution to American cultural heritage. Accession by the Library of Congress ensured both excellent preservation and reliable public access to many masterpieces of Persian miniature painting and calligraphy. Because none of the items lent by Mr. Minassian for publication in Martin's 1912 work on miniature painting remain in the collection today, it can be assumed that the majority of these precious pieces were included in Mr. Minassian's donation to the Library of Congress.
Mrs. Minassian continued her father's legacy as a premier collector and dealer of Islamic antiquities for the latter half of the twentieth century. She took on the responsibilities of running the family business in 1945, approximately one year after her father passed away. Mrs. Minassian was one of the few dealers of Islamic art in America. Her personal collection also followed the form of her father's: manuscripts, miniature painting, and ceramics were her major areas of interest. Upon her passing, her gallery closed and her estate was settled in a series of bequests. Brown University was very fortunate to be the prime beneficiary of her extensive family art collection and of many of the articles in her gallery at the time of her death.
A Stock Book used to record objects sold by the Minassians between 1939 and 1987 was passed along with the collection. While information about specific objects is difficult to glean from these records, the book does provide interesting information about the organizational systems of the dealers themselves. Mr. Minassian numbered each entry as a 'P-number.' This identification number was paired with a brief phrase indicating the nature of the entry, an entry for the price of the item, and often the name of the person to whom the piece was sold. The last entry is for P-1291. Mrs. Minassian did not continue this system. Her entries generally consist of a brief phrase to describe the object, the date, the buyer's name, and the sale price. Her handwriting is distinctly different from that of her father; he seemed to favor fountain pens while she often wrote in ball-point. A second record book in use by Mrs. Minassian between 1951 and 1979 also accompanies the collection, though it also provides very limited information on individual objects. More information may yet be uncovered through Mrs. Minassian's photographic documentation. A number of Ekta transparencies are associated with the collection and are presently located in a banker's box. These have yet to be organized. Their relationship to items presently in the collection is unclear, though may be revealed with future research.
While the pottery portion of Mrs. Minassian's generous bequest has yet to be formally accessioned by any Brown University institution, the manuscripts and miniature paintings are all presently housed in the John Hay Library. Once Mrs. Minassian's estate was settled in May 1997, the University made plans for formal accession of the manuscript portion of her gift at the John Hay Library. The manuscripts were delivered to the library in January of 1998 and formally accessioned at that time, under the special care of Mr. Mark Brown, Curator of Manuscripts in Special Collections. Under his supervision, the manuscript leaves were removed from their storage containers, inserted in folded archival tissue and placed in individual archival file folders. The original order in which the pieces were presented to the library was maintained through this process. Any information known about individual items was noted in pencil on the upper left corner of the archival folder. The pieces were placed in archival cardboard storage boxes for safe storage in the John Hay Library, where they remain today.