Wilma Fairbank, Historian of Chinese Art, 92

[DGH]

.

Wilma Cannon Fairbank, a historian of Chinese art and architecture,
died on April 4 at her home in Cambridge, Mass. She was 92.

Mrs. Fairbank had studied fine arts at Radcliffe College and was an
apprentice to the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera before she traveled to
Beijing in 1932 to marry John King Fairbank. Then a Rhodes scholar and
a lecturer at Qinghua University, John Fairbank later became the
leading scholar of modern China in the United States.

While in China, Mrs. Fairbank visited the remote countryside. There
she studied Buddhist cave temples, ancient stone tomb carvings and
bronze vessels, using her research to write scholarly articles on the
methods and materials of early Chinese artists.

Her article on Han period tomb murals in 1941, in which she explained
how she had been able to restore a crumbling ancient tomb, drew
scholarly recognition and was translated into Chinese. The article
earned Mrs. Fairbank membership in China's Institute for Research in
Chinese Architecture, a professional organization.

Returning to the United States in 1936, she and her husband settled in
Cambridge, Mass., where Mr. Fairbank was appointed to Harvard's
department of history. During World War II, the Fairbanks moved to
Washington, where she became the first employee of the China section
of the State Department's cultural relations division, which dealt
with scholarly and cultural exchange.

From 1945 to 1947, Mrs. Fairbank was cultural attaché to the United
States Embassy in Chongqing and later, the nationalist capital,
Nanjing.

In 1995 she published "Liang and Lin: Partners in Exploring China's
Architectural Past," a biography of a Chinese couple who were
groundbreaking scholars.

Wilma Cannon Fairbank was born on April 23, 1909, in Cambridge, Mass.,
the oldest child of Dr. Walter B. Cannon, a professor at the Harvard
Medical School, and the author Cornelia James Cannon.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/13/obituaries/13FAIR.html