WARNER, Langdon. Cambridge, Mass. 1.8.1881 — ibid. 9.7.1955. U.S. Art Historian and Central Asian Explorer. Son of Joseph B. W. and Margret W. 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. 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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