Seah Kim Joo

(b. 1939)

Villagers

Footnotes

Provenance
Samat Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur
Acquired directly from the above in 1967
Private Collection of Professor Josef Silverstein (1922-2021) and Marilyn Cooper Silverstein (1930-2021)
Thence by descent to the present owner

佘金裕
村民

簽名（右下）
蠟染畫

來源
吉隆坡Samat Art畫廊
藏家得自上述畫廊
Josef Silverstein教授和Marilyn Cooper Silverstein私人收藏
現藏家繼承自上述來源

Professor Josef Silverstein (1922-2021) and his wife Mrs Marilyn Cooper Silverstein (1930-2021) began collecting works of art on their first visit to Burma¹ as a young academic couple in 1955. They went on to become good friends and supporters of three leading artists in Myanmar's modern art movement in the 1960s: Paw Oo Thet (1936-1993), Win Pe (b. 1935), and Aung Khin (1921-1996). The Silverstein Collection contains these artists' early works, which are rarely seen at auction.

A renowned Myanmar expert, Professor Silverstein devoted his career as a scholar to Myanmar before retiring as a Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University in New Jersey, USA. He authored and edited several influential books on Myanmar, including The Political Legacy of Aung San; Burmese Politics: The Dilemma of National Unity; and Burma: Military Rule on the Politics of Stagnation. The Josef Silverstein Papers (1944-2002), his professional papers and research collection, are now housed in Cornell University's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections in Ithaca, New York.

Between 1970 and 1972, Professor Silverstein served as the third director of Singapore's Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, now known as ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute. He laid the foundations for the Institute and worked closely with Dr Goh Keng Swee and David Marshall to establish the Institute as one of the first Southeast Asian research centres dedicated to the study of the region.