About this listing
Unique museum of Tibetan and Buddhist works planned and built by Jacques Marchais in the 1940s
Place Details
Borough : Staten Island
Neighborhood : Lighthouse Hill
Place Matters Profile
By Breanne Scanlon
Tucked away behind a stone wall on a hillside on Staten Island is an unlikely enclave of Tibetan art, culture, and spirituality. The story of the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art is inseparable from the story of Jacques Marchais, a woman who devoted her life to sharing her passion for Tibet and Buddhism with other New Yorkers.
The Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art, now in its sixty-first year, was designed and built according to Marchais' vision and instructions. The museum was the culmination of Marchais' lifelong mission to connect Westerners with Tibetan culture and spirituality. Jacques Marchais Coblentz was born in 1887 in Cincinnati, Ohio. (Her father insisted on giving her the male family name of Jacques Marchais despite the fact that she was a girl.) Marchais' first introduction to Tibetan art was as a young girl, when she came across her great-grandfather's collection of bronze figurines, acquired during his time spent as a sea-merchant near India
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By Breanne Scanlon
Tucked away behind a stone wall on a hillside on Staten Island is an unlikely enclave of Tibetan art, culture, and spirituality. The story of the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art is inseparable from the story of Jacques Marchais, a woman who devoted her life to sharing her passion for Tibet and Buddhism with other New Yorkers.
The Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art, now in its sixty-first year, was designed and built according to Marchais' vision and instructions. The museum was the culmination of Marchais' lifelong mission to connect Westerners with Tibetan culture and spirituality. Jacques Marchais Coblentz was born in 1887 in Cincinnati, Ohio. (Her father insisted on giving her the male family name of Jacques Marchais despite the fact that she was a girl.) Marchais' first introduction to Tibetan art was as a young girl, when she came across her great-grandfather's collection of bronze figurines, acquired during his time spent as a sea-merchant near India and China. She later said that she felt immediately drawn to these figurines and that this was the first step in a lifelong love affair with Tibetan art.
Marchais was a successful theater actress from her childhood through her early adult years. After a failed marriage, during which she gave birth to two daughters and a son, Marchais married Harry Klauber around 1920 and moved from Illinois to New York City. Klauber, a Brooklyn native who worked in the chemical business, provided Marchais with the financial support necessary to pursue her interest in Buddhism and Eastern culture.
Although Marchais adhered to a primarily non-sectarian spirituality, she felt passionately that there was much for Westerners to learn from the artistic and cultural traditions of Tibet and the Himalayan region and Buddhism. Due to political turmoil in Tibet, Marchais was never able to travel there, but she did gradually build a substantial collection of Tibetan art through agents and dealers based both in the United States and in China. She hosted viewings of her growing collection and lectures in her home, and in 1938, she opened a gallery at 40 East 51st Street in Manhattan. The Jacques Marchais Gallery specialized in Tibetan and Indian art, and Marchais used the space to display her collection and to sell South Asian artwork.
While Marchais ran the gallery in Manhattan, she simultaneously began planning and designing a Center for Tibetan Art to be located next to her house on Staten Island. Drawing from Himalayan architecture and the design of the Dalai Lama's home in Tibet, Marchais laid out detailed plans for a center, research library, and garden. Marchais refused to enlist the help of any architects, planners or contractors, claiming that she was striving for perfection and that only she could understand the complex goals of her own plan. While she eventually did hire local construction workers to build the structure, Marchais was extremely involved in every step of the construction process. She even drove to rural parts of Staten Island to pick out stone for the buildings and transported loads of stone in her own car to the construction site.
The library and garden were built between 1941 and 1945 (with construction halting for a period of time due to the diversion of construction supplies to World War II), and the museum, built to resemble a Buddhist temple, was finished in 1947. The buildings were designed with a Himalayan style in mind and included pagoda-shaped roofs, stone walls, and trapezoidal windows. The research library originally held over 2,000 works on Tibetan art and culture and Buddhism, and the museum housed 3,000 pieces of artwork. The institution stood out, both in the neighborhood and beyond, for its sheer novelty.
In December 1947, Life magazine featured a photo of Marchais seated on a throne in her museum, accompanied by an article entitled "New York Lamasery: A new Tibetan temple bewilders Staten Island." Shortly after the Life article was published, and only four months after the museum opened, Marchais died in her home. Her husband, Harry Klauber, passed away a mere seven months later. In his will, Klauber created an endowment for the Museum "to ensure that it would remain cared for in perpetuity." A neighbor and dear friend of Jacques and Harry cared for the Museum until 1971. A small volunteer staff ran the Museum from 1972 until 1985, when a paid director was hired with the help of corporate grant.
In 2004, a new executive director and curator, both with experience in the museum field, were hired and have worked to develop a professional collection management program for the remaining 1,000 art pieces, reference works, and grounds surrounding the museum. In 2005, renovations of the museum and former library were undertaken with private donations, foundation support, and public funding. Today, the administrative offices are in the building of the former library, and the reference works amassed by Marchais are stored at an offsite location. The museum features a rotating display of works originally collected by Marchais, one of New York's earliest collections of Tibetan art, and as of this writing in 2008, hosts an exhibit devoted to the life of Marchais. A docent is on site to give guided tours, and visitors are free to stroll through the small garden that surrounds the site. The Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader, Dalai Lama, visited the Museum in 1991, and Tibetan monks frequently visit when they are in New York.
In its new iteration, the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art is also hosting public lectures, film screenings, and more. For more information about times, admission prices, and directions to the Museum, please visit the Museum’s website at http://www.tibetanmuseum.org.
When you visit, be sure to also see the only house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in New York City, located just around the corner at 48 Manor Ct., erected in 1959 from a prefabricated "kit" manufactured in the Midwest and shipped to its Staten Island owners.
Sources
Sarah Johnson, Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art, "From Staten Island to Shangri-La: The Collecting Life of Jacques Marchais," accompaniment to museum exhibit.
Correspondence with the Marchais' Executive Director Meg Ventrudo, Feb/Mar, 2008.
New York Times: Jacques Marchais obituary, Feb. 16, 1948; "Dalai Lama Gets Invitation Here," Apr. 15, 1959; "Shangri-La on Staten Island," Aug. 6, 1979; "Tibetan Art, on a Staten Island Hill," Oct. 18, 1985; "In a Temple Setting, Tibetan Artifacts," Oct. 1, 1989. [Posted, Apr. 2008]
