John and Nora Wise Papers

John Carroll Wise was born in Roanoke, Virginia on November 27, 1901 to Robert and Marcella Wise, and was the grandson of a former govenor of Virginia. After graduating from Harvard University he moved to New York to begin a career as a stock broker on Wall Street in 1920. He and Nora were married on June 1, 1929. After the stock market crash of 1929, John and Nora moved into the Westbury Hotel at Madison Avenue and 69th Street and survived by selling the family silver, antiques, bric-a-brac, and paintings. Among the paintings sold was "Fur Traders Descending the Mississippi" by George Caleb Burroughs and is now generally acknowledges to be Burroughs' masterpiece; the painting was sold to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for $1,500.00. Wise, recognizing the possibilites of dealing in art as a business, established a firm, John Wise Ltd. in 1931. His first acquisition was Minor C. Keith's collection of pre-Columbian art pruchased from Keith's heirs. The firm was devoted to acquiring and handling pre-Columbian textiles, sculptures, ceramics and metals, but solely on those of artistic merit. Wise is often credited as the first art dealer in the United States to market pre-Columbian objects as art. In 1935, Wise exhibited his collection at the Fogg Museum in conjunction with the Harvard Tercentenary. This exhibition is considered the event which removed many pre-Columbian objects from the realm of archaeology to the realm of art and gave art museums impetus to collect in the field. Wise would go on to sell objects to many museums before establishing the collection at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts in 1976, including the Cleveland Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Montreal Museum of Fiine Arts, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Cranbrook Foundation, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and many others. Wise also sold to and advised individuals who built notable private collections including Robert Woods Bliss, Harold Bache, Harry and Irene Beasley, Christian de Guigne, Alfred Glassell, Jr., and Nelson A. Rockefeller, many of which have ended up in museums. Though he focused on pre-Columbian works, he also sold some African, Pacific Islands, and Northwest Coast American Indian objects. In addition to dealing, Wise also lent his collection to museums for exhibition, including the Fogg in 1935, Wadsworth Atheneum in 1937, and Los Angeles County Museum in 1971-72. A notable exhibition that Wise developed was "World of Ancient Gold" for the 1964 New York World's Fair. Wise often traveled to South and Central America establishing relationships with sellers and sources of material including Guillermo Aurich B., Carlos Balser, Karl Curtis, Francisco Junger, Sven Karrell, Larco family, Guillermo Salazar, Juan Salinas, Antonio Sierra, and Baron Walram von Schoeler. Wise was not a scholar, but a connoisseur. He befriended many scholars including Samuel Lothrop, Philip Ainsworth Means, Junius Bird, Wendell Bennett, and Michael Coe. John Wise died on June 13, 1981 in Sharon, Connecticut. Nora Wise was born Nora Elizabeth Howell on October 16, 1901 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, but grew up in New York City. Nora and John were married on June 1, 1929. Nora was Vice President and Secretary of John Wise Ltd. and managed the many details of the business and gained experience in handling, installing and conserving the ancient works of art in the collection. Nora died on July 24, 1986. The Wise collection was sold to the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts in 1976, with additional pieces on loan, which eventually were gifted to the museum as bequests from the estates of John Wise and Nora Wise. The collection contains 2,700 pieces of art from pre-Columbian Central and South America.

Note written by Hillary Bober