Sherman E. Lee | Museum director, 90

Sherman E. Lee, 90, an expert on Asian art who as director of the Cleveland Museum of Art for a quarter of a century elevated it to the top echelon of American museums, died Wednesday in Chapel Hill, N.C.

Dr. Lee, who arrived at the Cleveland museum in 1952 as its curator of Oriental art, became director in 1958. It was shortly after the death of Leonard C. Hanna, a local industrialist who had left more than $30 million to the museum for acquisitions.

Thus relieved of much of the burden of raising money, Dr. Lee set about improving the museum's collections. He amassed a superb Asian collection and acquired dozens of major paintings by old masters such as Velazquez, El Greco and Goya, as well as masterpieces like Frederic Edwin Church's Twilight in the Wilderness, Jacques-Louis David's Cupid and Psyche, and The Holy Family on the Steps by Nicolas Poussin.

Dr. Lee, who viewed the museum as an educational institution, was wary of artistic fashion, eschewing the contemporary in favor of the time-honored, sometimes to the museum's detriment; the museum did not purchase a Jackson Pollock until 1980 and passed on opportunities to acquire works by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Jasper Johns.

"Sherman Lee had a very strong philosophy that you wait 20 years before you buy," Evan H. Turner, his successor, said in 1984. "You wait until the first flush of enthusiasm is over." - N.Y. Times News Service