Inspired by her honeymoon travels, Doris Duke built a winter home in Honolulu in the late 1930s called Shangri La, which houses the vast and unique collection of Islamic art that she assembled over more than 60 years. In 1957, Doris Duke returned to Thailand for the first time since her honeymoon, and its art and culture subsequently became a major focus of her collecting. Over the next few years, she would embark on a new project: to recreate and furnish a Thai village--complete with a replica of a pavilion from the temple compound of the Royal Palace in Bangkok--to educate the American public about Southeast Asian art and culture. She envisioned the village as a gift for the people of Hawai'i.
Doris Duke: The Southeast Asian Art Collection features some of the objects she collected for the Thai Village Project, and reveals the passion and talent of Doris Duke as a collector. It informs readers about the historical significance of the art and offers substantial visual rewards. The author contextualizes and describes objects in three main areas of the collection: sculpture, painting, and decorative and performing arts. This book's 100 plates and figures illustrate over 200 of the more than 2,000 objects in Doris Duke's collection, including works from Thailand, Burma, Cambodia, and China that exemplify the breadth and quality of the collection: tall, elaborately carved pulpits from which a Buddhist priest would address worshipers and monks; gilded figures of the Buddha; accordion-folded manuscripts and their decorated storage boxes; tall cabinets used for manuscript storage; offering vessels inlaid with mother-of-pearl; lacquer, nielloware, and the bencharong ceramics made in China for the Thai market; carved ivory objects; and weapons.
In the course of her life, Doris Duke undertook a series of ambitious projects, both public and private, including Shangri La, the Thai Village Project, Duke Gardens at Duke Farms in Hillsborough, New Jersey, and the preservation of eighteenth-century architecture in Newport, Rhode Island. Of these endeavors, only the Thai Village Project was never completed, mainly due to obstacles in securing an appropriate site in Hawai'i. For nearly 30 years, its artworks and structures remained on public display and in storage at her New Jersey estate. To honor Miss Duke's intention that the collection be used to inform the public about Southeast Asian art and culture, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation recently donated many of the objects to The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco and the Walters Art Museum of Baltimore and will be making additional gifts in 2003. This book is another aspect of the foundation's commitment to share her collection more broadly.
