Obsessed With Success
In Emily Sano, the Asian Art Museum has found a powerful, passionate
advocate who suffers no fools
Marianne Costantinou
San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, March 9, 2003

There are two types of people in the world: Those who slow down when they
approach a yellow traffic light, and those who floor it.

Forrest McGill learned that the hard way. The chief curator of the Asian Art
Museum was driving in Los Angeles, en route to persuade a major collector of
Japanese bamboo baskets to donate his treasures to the museum. His boss,
museum director Emily Sano, was riding shotgun.

As his luck would have it, McGill recalls, every time they reached an
intersection, the light turned yellow. To him, that was a signal to put on
the brakes.

But Sano would have none of that.

"Emily would always reach over and swat me," says McGill. " 'Keep going!
Keep GOING! We can make it!' "

Sano has been flooring it ever since she arrived 10 years ago in San
Francisco to join the Asian Art Museum. Almost from the get-go, she has been
obsessed with the public museum's big move - from the building it shared
with the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in Golden Gate Park to its renovated
new quarters at the Civic Center.

On March 20, the Asian Art Museum will reopen its doors at what had been the
old Main Public Library. The bigger space will allow for twice as many
pieces from its renowned art collection to be on permanent display. And the
building is all theirs.

>From the moment in 1988 that then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein

offered the library building to the museum, to its grand opening next week,
scores of people will have been involved in making the move happen. But even
when somebody else was officially in the driver's seat, it was Sano, many
say, that kept insisting the project "Keep going! Keep GOING! We can make
it!" - even if it meant giving folks a few swats along the way.

"Without Emily, we wouldn't be here," Jack Bogart, chairman of the board of
trustees, told the museum's 160 employees during a luncheon in January to
celebrate the staff's move to the new building. "Emily made it all work."

But then, Sano's life is a testament to her drive and tenaciousness. A
cotton sharecropper's daughter who spent her early years in a Japanese
internment camp, Sano has risen to a position in the rarefied art world that
is held by few women and even fewer minorities.

If anybody could oversee the daunting project, Sano could.

Sano has had a hand in it nearly every step of the way: scrambling for
donors for the $160.5 million needed for seismic upgrades and renovations to
the 1917 Beaux Arts library building; facing the ire of preservationists and
American art historians who opposed the removal of 14 murals custom-made for
the library's loggia; hiring the SWAT team of architects and gallery
designers and lighting experts and other consultants; grappling with
construction crews; and choosing which 2,500 of the museum's nearly 15,000
precious art pieces would go on display, and how to arrange them
thematically. Not to mention choosing the museum's new stationery.

All the while, Sano has also had to run the museum until the doors it shared
with the de Young in Golden Gate Park closed to the public in October 2001.
Even with the museum officially closed, Sano has still been involved with
planning future exhibitions, a process that can take years for a single show
and involves travel and negotiating with other museum directors and foreign
governments.

It's been an intense time. But then, Sano is an intense woman.

Reluctant public figure

Sano is petite, and at 61 her chin-length black hair is just starting to
gray. She has an easy smile and hearty laugh. Yet she is anything but
easygoing, those who know her say. At work she is all business. She doesn't
chitchat, and has formed no known friendships inside the museum. Her private
life is her private life.

Despite her 10-year tenure in this city of art lovers and busybodies, Sano
says she has agreed to only one other profile story about her. She
considered that experience such a waste of time that she sent copies to her
mother and siblings, then threw the rest away.

"It was, 'Where do you get your shoes? What do you eat for breakfast?' "

She peered over the top of her glasses: "I don't go for that."

Even her department heads claim to know little about her background beyond
what's on her resume: a doctorate and two master's degrees from Columbia
University, curatorial and deputy director posts at the Dallas Museum of Art
and at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. She lives around Laurel
Village, in the same two-bedroom, rent-controlled flat she moved into when
she arrived in the city. In a whisper, one staff member adds that Sano has a
longtime beau. Meanwhile, Sano so rarely mentions her stay at an internment
camp that one employee thought it was just a rumor. Even two people who
should be most familiar with her - the museum's spokesman and Sano's mentor
at the Kimbell - didn't know that she was a sharecropper's daughter.

It's clear the staff is the staff, and she is the boss.

"We don't have many niceties, like, 'How was your weekend?' " says Valerie
Pechenik, head of human resources and one of the few staff members who has
been at the museum longer than Sano. "It's pure business. It's what people
here expect - and respect."

Though Sano admits that management is not her favorite part of the job - "I
don't think anyone really likes administration," she says - she is very much
in control. She likens her organization to a "team," with each of her seven
department heads reporting directly to her. She opted not to have a deputy
or assistant director.

What she likes about being boss is being able to make the decisions that
define the museum. It's all about the art.

"Sometimes it's a lot of fun: coming up with ideas, initiating projects,
congratulating somebody about something that worked... Somebody calls and
offers you a show about Taoism. 'Wow. Taoism.' You get to think about that,"
she says.

Sano is known as a scholar, with a wide breadth of knowledge about a field
of art that goes back to 6000 B.C. Her expertise is in Japanese art and
Buddhist sculptures, and she has a special fondness for Japanese ceramics.
Her favorite museum piece is a bronze Chinese Buddha, because of its
childlike face.

As a Japanese American, Sano hopes the museum will show the general public
that not all Asians are the same.

"People think the Chinese are like the Japanese. And there's no difference
between Chinese and Indonesian," says Sano. "People have to get over this."

To help the public further appreciate the different cultures, Sano plans to
hold daily live performances and craft demonstrations in the museum. Making
art accessible to people with no art background, who often feel intimidated
in museums and galleries, is a goal Sano often expresses to her staff, says
Ikuko Satoda, the chief operating officer. Satoda says that Sano's
egalitarian view is what brought her to the Asian Art Museum after eight
years at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

"The museum world, like it or not, is very elite," says Satoda. "Emily is
not like that at all. She's very interested in the mass public, to make
people comfortable in the museum... Everybody is important to her - not just
the biggest donor, not just the most well-schooled scholar. She sees
everybody the same. She's very down-to-earth."

Another ambition of Sano's is to expand the museum's collection with
contemporary works from the 20th century, especially from Korea, where she
believes some of the most exciting work is being done. Her taste runs to
bold, simple design, says McGill. If there's money in the budget for making
art purchases, he says, Sano would rather get one exquisite piece than
several nice ones.

"Emily has the eye of the connoisseur and the intellect of a scholar," says
Maura Morey, president of the Asian Art Museum Foundation, which is the
museum's fund-raising arm. "She has the most incredible vision for the
institution... She so clearly understands the incredible role that Asian art
and culture play in the world."

Suffers no fools

Yet, even those who admire Sano the Professional are careful in choosing
adjectives to describe Sano the Person: Forceful. Driven. Tough.

The descriptions are not always meant as compliments.

"She's tenacious. Energetic. Smart," says Harry Parker, director of the Fine
Arts Museums of San Francisco, who has known Sano for two decades and who
occasionally crossed swords with her when his de Young Museum and the Asian
shared the same building. "She's very forceful, tough-minded... She's a
determined lady."

"Emily is very driven," says Pechenik. "She wants things done, and she wants
them done right."

But then, she and others add, Sano is no more demanding of others than she
is of herself. Sano is a self-described workaholic who consistently puts in
12- hour days and is usually at the office on weekends. It's not uncommon
for senior managers and curators to get a call at home from Sano, whether it
be 10 p.m. on a Saturday or early Sunday morning. Staff meetings are
regularly called for 8 a.m., and Sano will often schedule one-on-one
sessions for even earlier than that.

Sano's 24/7 schedule is so notorious among the staff that when her 10th
anniversary at the museum rolled around in January, her department heads
bought her an "office" gift: a white terry-cloth robe and red furry
slippers.

Sano thought the gifts were a hoot.

Given her packed schedule, her assistant, Cheri Woodward, usually calls her
on her cell phone to prompt her to get to the next meeting. Even with these
helpful reminders, Sano is often so focused on work that she loses track of
the mundane details of everyday life. At the celebration of her 10th
anniversary, her senior directors took turns teasing her about her
absentmindedness, like leaving restaurants with her handbag still draped on
the chair, or taking careful notes and then forgetting her notepad.

"She calls her office 'The Black Hole,' " says Woodward with a laugh. "She's
a good sport about it."

Minutes before a big meeting seeking a grant from a foundation, Sano was
pickpocketed on a New York City subway, says J Mullineaux, head of
development.

If it had been him, he says, he would have been so worried about the thief
racking up charges on his credit cards that he wouldn't have been able to
concentrate. But Sano acted at the meeting as if nothing had happened.

"Emily is a runaway train," always on the go, says Tim Hallman, the museum
spokesman. Nothing stops her once she gets going. Given that, it's best not
to get in her way. She does not mince words. If things are not done right or
as expected, there's no mistaking her irritation.

Stepping into a conference room before a meeting, Sano notices coats draped
on the backs of seats.

"You know, there's a clothes closet," she says. Folks jump up and hang up
their coats.

Two of those closest to Sano, Woodward and a museum consultant named Hal
Fischer, each note that she "doesn't suffer fools gladly."

Told that an outsider's impression is that some staff members appear nervous
in her presence, as if anxious not to displease her, Sano does not act
surprised or defensive.

"I have my standards," she says.

But, she adds, she's proud of her staff, which has more than tripled since
she was promoted in 1995, from deputy director and chief curator to the
director's job. Even though the museum's collection is valued between $3
billion and $5 billion, and is considered the city's most valuable asset
after its real estate holdings, Sano claims that the staff is the museum's
most valuable treasure.

"This staff has performed so well," she says. "The staff has been fabulous."

Does she compliment them when they do a good job?

"I tell them," she says. Then she pauses, and looks quizzically at her
marketing director, Ralph Rogers. "I think I do."

He nods reassuringly.

But others are not as sure of her gratitude toward work well done.

Take Clarence Shangraw, the former chief curator. He was hired in the early
'60s by Avery Brundage, whose collection is the cornerstone of the Asian Art
Museum. When the Asian Art Museum opened in 1966, Shangraw went with
Brundage's collection and served as the museum's chief curator until his
retirement in 1992. Sano replaced him a few months later.

Upon his retirement, Shangraw says, the executive committee of the Asian Art
Commission gave him the honorary title of chief curator emeritus. The title
included, he says, the same access privileges to the museum's library,
storage and collection that he had enjoyed while on staff.

But moments after the public ceremony officially closing the doors to the
Golden Gate Park building, Shangraw says that Sano gave him news that still
upsets him.

" 'There are going to be some changes,' " she reportedly told him. " 'You
can't have the free rein you had before. You have to turn in your access
badge. ' "

Without the badge, he would have to call and make appointments for his
frequent visits to the museum library, and be escorted around the building.
Shangraw says he considered the new rule an imposition on the museum staff,
and a show of disrespect toward him.

He appealed Sano's decision. The trustees backed up their director.

"Now I'm considered like an ordinary citizen or a security risk, escorted
back and forth," says Shangraw. "It's a nice way to treat someone who was
there 30 years."

But Sano says the decision was simply a new security policy. After the de
Young closed, the Asian acquired its own security force, she says, which
decided that the badges would be restricted to active employees and the
trustees.

"He's not an employee," says Sano. "Policy is policy. What you can't do is
establish a policy and make exceptions. We tried our best to explain it to
him,

that there was nothing personal here."

Well, he did take it personally, she's told. And he's still very hurt.

"That's too bad," says Sano.

The mural flap

Compromise is not part of her makeup. Once Sano has made up her mind, that's
pretty much it.

The public saw that side of her during emotional public debates, from 1997
to 1999, about what to do with 14 murals that were painted for the library
by Gottardo Piazzoni, a prominent Bay Area artist. Preservationists and art
historians urged that the 1930s murals stay in the historic building. But
Sano felt the San Francisco landscapes did not belong in a museum that was
dedicated to Asian art. In addition, the architect felt that they should be
removed to bring more light to the grand staircase and the loggia.

The debates became so heated that Sano was accused of "cultural vandalism."
But no matter how personal the attacks, Sano did not budge.

"No, I didn't go home and cry," she says, amused at the notion. "It was a
trial to go through, certainly... The criticism was very harsh, but we had
important needs, too... I wanted to do this for the museum and the
collection."

"This is not a woman who buckles," says Fischer. "This is not a woman
worried about ruffling feathers."

"She has no fear. Period," says Mullineaux. "She's able to tackle things
because she faces it head-on. People interpret it to be a very aggressive
style. I see it as very passionate."

Parker says that the Fine Arts Museums declined to take a public stance on
the murals. But, he says, he told Sano in private that he felt that the
murals should stay.

"I think the murals were integral to the library... " he says. "She was
anxious to prevail."

Once city agencies decided to let the murals be relocated, Parker came up
with a plan to have them reside in the new de Young, which is constructing a
new museum building. The murals will not only be part of the collection, but
the de Young will re-create the original space.

Parker feels that he and the de Young were rather magnanimous, what with
keeping silent during the debate, then offering to take the murals.

If Sano agrees, she hasn't told him so.

"I never thought she appreciated enough that we rose above the fray," says
Parker.

"She hasn't thanked us," he adds. "She doesn't view it as a rescue. I did."

The Roots of Passion

In the 1980s, when Sano was the curator of the Asian art collection at the
Kimbell and Edmund "Ted" Pillsbury was the museum director, he says he
encouraged Sano to speak her mind, even if it meant disagreeing with him or
ruffling others. He says he'd rather have a woman of Sano's integrity and
smarts running the show than someone with less talent and more tact.

"I would imagine she'd be demanding to work for. I imagine she probably
scares some people," says Pillsbury. "Maybe she should develop more her
skills of diplomacy. Maybe she should develop her managerial techniques. But
isn't it wonderful that the museum has such a powerful advocate?

"She can purr like a cat when she wants to. She can be gracious and charming
to a fault - when she wants to be," he says. "I imagine her effort in San
Francisco has been so Herculean that she has had to manage through fiat,
through will, rather than subtle team-building consensus. It's been largely
her drive that's made her persevere."

Pillsbury believes the key to understanding her drive is her childhood. But
how Emily Sano's past shaped her is not something she cares to discuss with
a stranger.

"The museum. Let's talk about the museum," she says, cutting off the
questions. "We don't have to reinvent childhood psychology."

At a senior staff meeting to discuss the museum's new stationery, Sano
mentions that her given name was Emiko Joy, but that in the rural Arkansas
town where she and her three siblings grew up, there were no other Japanese
families. Not wishing to stand out, she says, she changed her name to its
closest English version: Emily.

Her mother was born in Southern California, the child of Japanese
immigrants. Her father was born in Japan. When he was 16, he jumped ship in
America.

Soon after Sano was born in California in February 1942, her family was
moved to a Japanese internment camp in Arizona, where they stayed until the
end of World War II. Everything they had in California was gone, so with
about 20 other camp families, they took jobs as laborers on a cotton
plantation in Arkansas. The other families saved money and moved away, but
hers stayed. Her father became a sharecropper, given "40 acres and a mule,"
says Sano, to raise cotton, with one-fourth of the crop going to pay the
rent.

Sano says that it was not until a college history course that she learned
about the existence of the internment camps. She asked her mother about the
period and was horrified to learn that her own family had been relocated
there.

She had been too young to remember living there, and her parents had never
talked about it.

"My mother's personality was not to dwell on the past," says Sano. "My
father was too busy to dwell on the past."

Sano had gone to Indiana University in Bloomington with the idea of becoming
a scientist. But she soon realized she wasn't good in math or German. She
took up Japanese, and spent her junior year abroad in Japan.

"I got interested in this question of heritage," she says.

In Japan, she met Stanford graduate students who were there studying art.
She became fascinated by Japanese ceramics and visited the old kilns. She
was hooked.

The art. When she talks about the art, Sano seems a different person. She
brightens. Her voice gets excited. She's happy.

It's suggested that the new museum will be a great legacy to her.

Sano looks surprised. She's been consumed with making it happen. But in the
end, it's not about her.

"The collection is so good and it was not well-known. I though it was a
shame," she says. "If anything deserves its own building, it's this
collection,

this museum. It's so great for this city."

Marianne Costantinou is a Magazine staff writer. E-mail her at
mcostantinou@sfchronicle.com.
(http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/03/0
9/CM161632.DTL)

see also the website of the asian art museum: http://www.asianart.org/
opening exhibition: “Treasures Unveiled”
(http://www.asianart.org/openingdayprograms.htm)

In a New Light: The Asian Art Museum Collection
An Introduction to the Asian Art Museum
>From Monastery to Marketplace: Books and Manuscripts of Asia
(all starting march 20)

"The museum’s collection galleries—featuring more than 2,500 artworks
uniquely presented along common themes—offer a comprehensive introduction to
all the major cultures of Asia. Winding through all the gallery are three
major themes: the development of Buddhism (because Buddhism is one of the
few cultural phenomena that is [or was] important in most Asian countries,
and because our collections of Buddhist art are uniformly strong); trade and
cultural exchange, to emphasize how important trade, and the movements of
pilgrims, travelers, and of course armies, have always been in the spread of
artistic ideas and techniques; and local beliefs and practices, to show the
importance of indigenous ideas, and also how international phenomena like
Hinduism or porcelain-making, are adapted to local conditions."
"Avery Brundage Collection
Approximately 53% of the objects in the museum’s collection were donated by
Chicago industrialist Avery Brundage in the 1960s, serving as the impetus
for the museum’s founding. His contribution includes some of the museum’s
most celebrated objects—including a gilt bronze Buddha dated 338, the oldest
known dated Chinese Buddha in the world, often cited as a textbook-example
of Chinese Buddhist art."
-> more about the collection: http://www.asianart.org/collection.htm

____________________

Matthias Arnold M.A.
Digital Resources
Institute of Chinese Studies
University of Heidelberg
Akademiestr. 4-8
69117 Heidelberg
Germany

Phone: ++ 49 - (0) 62 21 - 54 76 75
Fax: ++ 49 - (0) 62 21 - 54 76 39

http://www.chinaresource.org
http://www.sino.uni-heidelberg.de

www.fluktor.de
www.zhaomo.de.vu