Horace H. F. Jayne

Horace Howard Furness Jayne (Cape May, New Jersey, 9 June 1898 – 6 August 1975, Palm Beach, Florida) was an American museum director and curator, art historian, and expert on Asian art who served as the director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology (the Penn Museum) and the vice-director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Upbringing He was the son of University of Pennsylvania professor/Dean Horace Fort Jayne and author Caroline Furness Jayne, and the grandson and namesake of Shakespearean scholar Horace Howard Furness. He grew up in Philadelphia and Wallingford, Pennsylvania, and attended Episcopal Academy. Both parents died when he was in his teens; afterward he and his sister Kate lived with their uncle Dr. William Henry Furness III. He graduated from Harvard University in 1919, and was a member of its 1923-24 and 1925-26 archaeological expeditions to northwest China, sponsored by the Fogg Art Museum. He received a master's degree in art history from the University of Pennsylvania in 1933.

Career Temple of the Attainment of Happiness Shofukuji ( 1400), Philadelphia Museum of Art. Ceremonial Teahouse Sunkaraku ( 1917), Ōgi Rodō, architect, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

He joined the staff of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) in 1921, and was made curator of East Asian art in 1923. The U.S. State Department took over the program in 1946, and Jayne was the first American civilian sent to China after the war. He headed the China desk of Voice of America, 1949-1953. He was advisory curator at the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, Florida, 1961-1966; and curator of Asian arts at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida from 1966 to his death in 1975.

PMA acquisitions The Philadelphia Museum of Art's massive new building opened in March 1928, but with only about a sixth of its planned galleries completed and open to the public. and in Tokyo, a traditional teahouse by architect Ōgi Rodō (1863–1941). In China, he purchased a circa-1775 scholar's study and a circa-1640 reception hall, both in Beijing.

Reception Hall The late-Ming dynasty reception hall was from a minor palace outside the Forbidden City. The palace was built by Wang Cheng'en, a eunuch and loyal attendant to the last Ming emperor, Chongzhen Emperor (reign: 1628-1644). (Research by PMA Assistant Curator of East Asian Art Adriana Proser, published in 2004, indicates that Jayne misidentified the reception hall's original owner in a 1929 article in The Pennsylvania Museum Bulletin.) This error was perpetuated for 75 years until corrected by Proser.

During his tenure at the Penn Museum, Jayne coordinated the Penn team that, in partnership with the British Museum, excavated the site of Ur in Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq). He worked with Charles Leonard Woolley, who oversaw the excavations at Tell al-Muqayyar (ancient Ur) – the first excavations done in the modern nation-state of Iraq. Jayne urged Woolley to terminate excavations after his eleventh season (1932-1933) in the field, in part because the Great Depression had depleted Penn Museum's financial resources.

Published works Jayne edited the letters of his grandfather, Horace Howard Furness. He wrote numerous articles for the Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin, the University Museum Bulletin, the Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, and other publications. He was co-editor (with Langdon Warner of the Fogg Art Museum) of Eastern Art, a quarterly journal that debuted in 1930 and folded in 1931 after 5 issues.

The Letters of Horace Howard Furness (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1922), H. H. F. Jayne, ed. The Chinese Collections of the University Museum: A Handbook of the Principal Objects (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1941) A Handbook of the Chinese Collections in the Norton Gallery and School of Art (West Palm Beach, FL: Palm Beach Art Institute, 1972)

Personal

Jayne inherited "Lindenshade," his grandfather's house and estate in Wallingford, Pennsylvania.

He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1934.

He and his wife are buried at Woodlands Cemetery in West Philadelphia.