1. Rare Student Research Opportunity

Rare Student Research Opportunity The W&L Art Museum has released a new digital catalog of the Groke Mickey collection of rare Chinese fan paintings.

By Kelsey Goodwin
October 1, 2025

"This catalog is an important resource for both our campus and the wider public, offering fresh insights and opportunities for research on Chinese fan painting."

~ Isra El-beshir, director of art museums and galleries

Those interested in perusing Washington and Lee Art Museum and Galleries' collection now have access to a new digital catalog offering an in-depth look at a major gift of Chinese fan paintings in the museum's collection.

Last fall, Griffin Conti '26 learned about one of the museum's research priorities, an effort to create a more robust catalog for the collection of rare Chinese fan paintings. The collection was donated in 1995 by art collector and philanthropist Groke Mickey, who gifted both art and acquisition funds to the Reeves Center, now the Reeves Museum of Art. The catalog is now online and features detailed photos, descriptions and analyses of Chinese fan paintings spanning centuries.

Rachel Du, who served as a visiting curator of Asian art at W&L during the 2024-2025 academic year and currently serves as the principal gifts officer at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, oversaw the research, which included rewriting the painting descriptions to be more in-depth and exploring the historical and literary context of the paintings. Du says the collection is significant in its overlap with major institutional collections such as the Ellsworth Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City with respect to the time period, artists and geography represented. Mickey's gift, comprised of 94 fans and one handscroll, showcases a wide variety of artists, styles and social contexts across three centuries, which Du says was one of the reasons the collection fascinated her.

"This collection is a great tool for teaching because it's so multi-faceted," Du says. "You can look at it from a purely historical, biographical standpoint, or geographical, chronological or visual. It lends itself to a lot of opportunities for pedagogy."

Knoxville, Tennessee, native Conti is a double major in philosophy and Chinese with a Middle East and Southeast Asia studies minor focusing on Sanskrit. He says the project was a valuable opportunity to gain further insight into Chinese art and culture while making use of his Chinese language skills, which were enhanced by his participation in 2023 in an ROTC-funded program called Project GO that allowed him to study Mandarin.

"I did not have much exposure to Chinese art prior to working on this project," Conti says. "It's been fascinating to look at the different fan paintings represented in the collection and analyze them."

Painted fans became popular during the Song dynasty (960-1279) and include calligraphy in addition to painted scenes. Conti notes that examining the fan painting led to other connections to Chinese culture, such as a recurring reference in multiple fan paintings to a famous poem by 11th-century Chinese poet Su Shi or a comparison of the different styles of calligraphy used throughout the collection. As Conti worked on refining the descriptions of each painting - revising them into "more of an analysis of each of the paintings," he says - he consulted closely with Du about how best to capture each piece's depth and significance. Conti says the catalog, which will eventually be available in print form, is intended to specifically highlight unique aspects of the collections such as its rare emphasis on female calligraphers, the varied styles of calligraphy represented and its representation of artists from the Southern School of Chinese painting.

Conti's ROTC commitment will require him to fulfill four years of service either on active duty or in the reserves after graduation, after which he has set his sights on returning to Taiwan for graduate school, where he plans to pursue comparative philosophy. In addition to his language training in Chinese, his MESA minor has focused specifically on mastering Sanskrit, and Conti hopes to find a graduate program where he can continue to study both languages. Conti credits W&L with helping him find his passion for studying language and for exploring and comparing schools of Eastern thought.

"Griffin's contributions exemplify how student curiosity and language study can breathe new life to historic collections," says Isra El-beshir, director of art museums and galleries, "and how museum work can, in turn, shape and deepen a student's intellectual path."

El-beshir says the catalog will provide opportunities for further scholarly inquiry within the collection.

"This catalog is an important resource for both our campus and the wider public, offering fresh insights and opportunities for research on Chinese fan painting," El-beshir says. "By launching the digital catalog with thoughtful context and scholarship, we reveal the richness of our collection."

Explore the Groke Mickey collection and learn more about upcoming events and programs offered by the W&L Art Museum and Galleries.