James J. Lally is one of the senior dealers of Chinese art in the United States. From 1970 to 1985 he worked at Sotheby’s, becoming director of the Chinese art department in 1974 and president of Sotheby’s North America in 1984. In 1986 he founded J.J. Lally & Co. in New York.

WHAT ARE COLLECTORS BUYING NOW?

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The news we keep reading over and over again is that we have many more Chinese buyers of Chinese art, from Hong Kong, Taiwan and the mainland. By and large they have a fascination for objects that embody the height of Chinese imperial glory—that is, objects made for the emperors and their palaces during the Ming and Qing dynasties. That’s the headline.

However, about 60 percent of the buyers at auctions in Europe and America are from outside China, and there are many other collecting areas. For example, there is interest in scholars’ table articles: inkstones, brushpots, ink cakes and other things associated with scholarly activity. There is widespread private and museum interest in ancient Chinese art, such as early ceramics, archaic bronze vessels and jade carvings. Of course, porcelain continues to be a highly collected area, and
Buddhist and Daoist sculpture and ancient pottery tomb sculpture, with its imagery of animals or humans, is very appealing.

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUTTHE RECENT FEDERAL RAIDS ON CALIFORNIA MUSEUMS FOR ALLEGED ILLEGAL ACQUISITION ASIAN ARTIFACTS?

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The sensational news reports make it sound like a conspiracy to steal Thai national treasures, but in fact the California dealers were buying Ban Chiang–type pottery and bronze implements that are openly traded in Bangkok every day for a few hundred dollars each. In the absence of any treaty agreement or even a request for assistance from Thailand, I do not believe that U.S. Customs has any grounds for stopping a tourist or dealer from bringing Ban Chiang material into the U.S. Nevertheless, these sensational headlines do put museums on the defensive. In fact, the net effect of this kind of story is to increase museums’ self-consciousness and paranoia, leading them to eliminate from consideration a lot of perfectly legitimate material simply because a fully documented history is not available.

It’s a great mistake to conflate the situation in the Asian art market with what is going on in Italy or the antiquities market. There are enormous differences in the way things have evolved, both in the international and internal markets. For one thing, China holds auctions in a volume that dwarfs all Chinese art sales in the rest of the world combined—as opposed to Italy or Greece, where there’s virtually no public sale of antiquities.

WHAT ABOUT CHINA’S ATTEMPTS TO GET THE U.S. TO BAN IMPORTATION OF ALL PRE-1911 CHINESE ART?

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Shutting off the American market would have no impact; recent statistics show that U.S. public auctions account for less that 5 percent of the trade in Chinese art. However, I frankly don’t know that the Chinese themselves are even making the attempt. It’s impossible to find anyone in the P.R.C. culture relics apparatus who will stand up and say that they initiated this request for U.S. Customs to impose wide-ranging restrictions against the importation of Chinese art—which, by the way, has been tabled. More likely, it was generated by the U.S. State Department.

WHAT WILL YOU BE SHOWING DURING ASIA WEEK IN NEW YORK?

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Our show this year is entitled “2,000 Years of Chinese Sculpture.” We have about 30 different offerings in different mediums, of which the earliest is a bronze kneeling figure cast as a lamp stand from the Warring States period (475–221 B.C.). The term “Chinese sculpture” is being interpreted broadly to include Buddhist and Taoist religious works, as well as secular tomb figures and everything in between.

WHAT ADVICE DO YOU HAVE FOR BEGINNERS IN THE FIELD?

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You need to focus. Ask, in what area is it within my budget to acquire very good things? It’s a road to misery to select a field that it’s impossible to succeed in. In Song paintings, one comes up every three years and it’s priced in the millions. You aren’t going to be happy. Ming blue and white porcelain is practical, but the best pieces, from the late 14th and 15th centuries, are going to cost a million. But because of politics, prejudice or fashion, late Ming porcelains are not as expensive, so you can have a delightful collecting career that is within your budget.