Portrait of Dikran G. Kelekian by Milton Avery
A 1943 portrait by the renowned modern American painter Milton Avery (1885–1965) of his friend Dikran Kelekian—a noted collector of modern paintings, Coptic, and Islamic art, and an influential dealer in Middle Eastern art of all periods—is the centerpiece of this installation. It is shown alongside twenty textiles and decorative objects created in Egypt between 300 and 800 A.D. Many are from the collection of works from Egypt that Kelekian began to acquire in the late 1800s. In addition to textile fragments, the installation includes a statuette, a necklace, and a comb.
The presentation presents one example of Kelekian's success in encouraging contemporary artists to become interested in ancient art, especially Coptic art. Avery depicts the dealer before a background decorated with sketchily drawn Coptic textile patterns that are arranged as if roughly sewn together into a hanging. The motifs are similar to those on works in the exhibition.
Kelekian's generation called the works Coptic in reference to Egypt's dominant Christian community at the time they were discovered in burial sites in the late nineteenth century. Their motifs referring to Greek and Roman mythology were associated with the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C. Recent research places these works within the larger sphere of Mediterranean culture, as they are displayed at the Met, rather than limiting them to being an Egyptian Coptic phenomenon.
Dikran Garabed Kelekian (1868–1951) was born in the Armenian community in Kayseri, when it was an important city of the Ottoman Empire. After opening a gallery in Istanbul in 1892, he showed "Persian" works at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. He and his brother Kevork went on to establish galleries in Paris, London, Cairo, and New York that attracted the major collectors of their time. He cultivated friendships with artists including Milton Avery as well as Mary Cassatt, Marsden Hartley, Henri Matisse">Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso">Pablo Picasso, and John Singer Sargent, among others. His American clients included such collectors as George Blumenthal, H. O. and Louisine Havemeyer (whom he escorted through Egypt), and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (to whom he sold monumental friezes from the palace of Ashurnasirpal II at Nimrud, which Rockefeller eventually gave to the Metropolitan Museum). A small faience statue of a hippopotamus—the Museum's unofficial mascot, known as "William"—was also owned by Kelekian before it was acquired by the Metropolitan.
Milton Avery (1885–1965) was an American artist who came to Kelekian's attention in the dealer's old age. Avery and his friend Marsden Hartley knew Kelekian while he was in New York. Avery's portrait of Kelekian was first shown in the exhibition Kelekian as the Artist Sees Him, held at the Durand-Ruel Galleries in New York in 1944.
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