A Treasure from the Orient

Nasli Heeramaneck migrated to the U.S. from India in 1927 with two main possessions: $75 in cash and a trunkful of objets d'art and Oriental miniatures. The son of a Bombay art dealer and a descendant of a long line of Parsis (a sect that left Persia in about the 8th century and settled in India), Heeramaneck quickly found a ready market in America. From that day forward, his policy became, as his wife Alice puts it, to "buy five, sell four and keep the best for himself."

Heeramaneck's eye for quality, however, was so sharp that even his "second bests" were good enough to ensure him a blue-chip roster of clients, including some of the top U.S. museums. In the process, he built up his own private collections--not only from his native subcontinent, but also of pre-Columbian and Persian art. When a choice selection from Heeramaneck's Indian collection toured four U.S. museums two years ago, curators eyed them avidly and wondered which lucky museum would acquire the lot.

His collection included an almost unparalleled variety of stone religious statuettes, ranging from a voluptuous pair of seminude 1st century dryads to a masterly 5th century lion's head from Mathura. There were ferocious bronze twelve-armed Kashmirian deities, smiling eastern Indian Krishnas and serene Nepalese Buddhas, to say nothing of inlaid daggers and textiles woven with iridescent beetle wings. Yet to many scholars, the most delightful items were the exquisite 16th-to-19th century manuscript paintings from the Rajput and Mogul civilizations of western and central India. These, in more than 70 sprightly miniatures, detailed stories of the gods as well as princely revels and the courtly chase.

Last week the Los Angeles County Museum of Art jubilantly announced that it had acquired from Heeramaneck, now 67, the bulk of his Indian collection --345 items--for $2,500,000, after Heeramaneck's negotiations with the Boston Museum of Fine Arts fell through. With one single purchase, Los Angeles has thus acquired an Indian collection that ranks alongside those of Boston, the Cleveland Museum of Art and Kansas City's Nelson-Atkins Gallery. The museum plans to capitalize on its new trove by building up its Oriental library, and to further attract scholars to the area by cooperating in programs with nearby U.C.L.A., which already has a strong Asian-studies department.

Los Angeles has long suffered from the gibe that it was a museum in search of a major collection. Now it has one. Says Director Kenneth Donahue: "This is the most important purchase the museum has made since it opened in 1910."

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