WARNER, Langdon. Cambridge, Mass. 1.8.1881 — ibid. 9.6.1955. U.S. Art Historian and Central Asian Explorer. Son of advocate Joseph Bangs Warner (1848–1923) and Margret Woodbury Storer. Educated at Harvard College (A.B. 1903). Participated in Pumpelly–Carnegie Expedition to Trans-Caspia in 1904-05. In 1906-13 Assistant Curator of Oriental Art in Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. In 1913-14 Director of American School of Archaeology in Peking, in 1917-23 Director of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia. In 1923-50 Field Fellow in Fogg Museum, Harvard University, also Lecturer in Fine Arts at the university. During WW II served in Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives (MFAA) Section of the U.S. Army, in 1946 in Japan. LL.D. University of California. Married 1910 Lorraine d’O. Roosevelt, a cousin of Theodore Roosevelt, two daughters and one son.
In 1923-24 and 1925 Warner led two Fogg Museum China Expeditions to Central Asia visiting Dunhuang. There he succesfully removed 26 Tang wall-paintings and sent them to the States, causing a long-standing controversy. But the enmity towards foreigners was rapidly increasing in China and the second expedition was soon interrupted with meagre results.
Publications: “An eighth-century statue from Tun-Huang with Chinese and Japanese parallels”, Art Studies 1926, 29-41.
– The Long Old Road in China. 8+168 p. Garden City, NY 1927.
– Buddhist Wall-Paintings: a Study of a Ninth-Century Grotto at Wan-fo-hsia near Tun-huang. 15+33 p. 45 pl. Cambridge, Mass. 1938.
– Books on Japanese art.
Sources: Who Was Who in Am. 3; *Th. Bowie (ed.), L.W. through his Letters. Bloomington 1966; *Hopkirk, Foreign Devils. L. 1980, 209-225; *J.M. Plumer, Arts Or. 2, 1957, 633-637; *B. Rowland, HJAS 18, 1955, 447-450, with portrait drawing; Wikipedia.
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