Art appraiser and principal for Art Care & Appraisals LLC, and former museum management professional
Mary Jane is currently an art appraiser and principal for Art Care & Appraisals LLC, in Norwich, Vermont. She studied Chinese with Mrs. Lin for two years, shortly after the time Mrs. Lin arrived at Wellesley. Upon graduating from Wellesley in 1971 with an independent major in Asian Studies, she studied Classical Chinese at Middlebury during the summer of 1971. From 1971-74, she worked at the National Palace Museum in Taipei as a translator and English language editor in the Department of Painting & Calligraphy and the Director’s Office. Mary Jane subsequently studied at Yale from 1974-78, with her Master’s thesis on the Yuan artist Zhao Mengfu, and her doctoral dissertation on the Ming calligrapher Zhu Yunming. Since then, she has led group tours to China and couriered artwork around the world. She has also taught courses on Chinese art and archaeology at Yale, Dartmouth, and the University of New Mexico; Chinese language at The Mountain School in Vermont; and Chinese cooking wherever she has had a spacious kitchen. Her museum career in collections management and traveling exhibitions over the past fifty years has included positions at the Ashmolean Museum, Yale University Art Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Dartmouth College Museum & Galleries, and the Guggenheim Museum. While at Yale, she co-authored Traces of the Brush: Studies in Chinese Calligraphy.