Laurence Sickman

Laurence Chalfant Stevens Sickman (1907–1988) was an American academic, art historian, sinologist and Director of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City.

Education A native of Denver, Colorado, Sickman became interested in Japanese and Chinese art while in high school. In 1930, he earned a degree in the field at Harvard, where he also became fluent in Chinese. purchasing Chinese paintings, sculpture and furniture for collection and study at the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of the Nelson-Atkins Museum. He traveled on a scholarship to China, where he met Langdon Warner, his former Harvard professor and one of the trustees of the Nelson museum, which was being established. Warner, who had been appointed to build a collection for the museum, initially tutored Sickman. Sickman was later given the responsibility of buying works on his own by means of a $11 million donation by Kansas City Star founder William Rockhill Nelson. and Patrick Lennox Tierney.

Curatorship after World War II At war's end, he returned to the Nelson-Atkins museum, where he was director from 1953 through 1977. 1956 – The Art and Architecture of China (with Alexander Coburn Soper). Baltimore, Maryland: Penguin Books. OCLC 192176467