Yen for Art

Of the countless G.I.s who spent a tour of duty in Japan, few failed to load up on souvenirs. But only a handful of Americans realized what a collector's paradise was within their reach. Among the enthusiastic exceptions are the two Hauge brothers, Victor and Osborne, who with Osborne's wife Gratia were sent to Tokyo at the end of World War II, promptly fell in love with oriental ways and decided that the key to the mysterious East is its art.

Last week, in the American University's Watkins Gallery in Washington, D.C., the windfall result of their modest collecting spree was on view--a selection of 86 Japanese and Chinese paintings, sculpture and ceramics from their collection in Tokyo and Washington, which Freer Gallery Expert Harold Stern enthusiastically calls "without doubt one of the finest private collections in the world." Included were pottery and sculpture from the Han, Tang, Sung and Ming dynasties, a Sesshu landscape, Ashikaga screens, and a primitive warrior sculpture judged by Cleveland Art Museum Curator Sherman Lee to be "one of the finest Chinese clay sculptures in America."

What makes the Hauge collection even more unusual is that it was put together out of the salaries and savings of two modestly paid Government officials. (Osborne, 43, is now an economist in the Bureau of the Budget in Washington; Victor, 37, is still in Tokyo as top U.S. Information Service radio-TV man.) The Hauges got off to a flying start with the whirlwind of inflation that swept the Japanese yen from 15 all the way to 360 to the dollar. At the same time the Hauges were reaping a paper harvest of yen, Japanese families, hit with postwar taxes, were living an "onionskin existence," peeling off long-treasured art works to stay afloat.

The Hauges, who had free Government housing and low living expenses, put in 70% of their salaries to build their collection. Says Gratia: "We were always broke." But today Victor Hauge is the proud possessor of the collection's gem, an ink-on-silk painting by Northern Sung Dynasty Painter Li Lung-mien, so rare that the Japanese government has declared it a national treasure. At their home in Falls Church, Va., Osborne and Gratia can trot out genuine Ming dishes for company. Says Gratia: "We don't regret a single thing we bought--only the things we didn't."

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