The ASU Art Museum received nearly $4 million in contemporary ceramics in 2003-2004 from Arizona resident and Belgian native Stéphane Janssen, a longtime supporter of the museum and one of the world’s leading collectors of contemporary art. Janssen donated 686 ceramic works to the museum’s Ceramics Research Center and is offering another 200 pieces for the museum to sell to raise money for additional acquisitions.

Janssen’s decision to donate his collection to the CRC grew out of his love for Phoenix, his admiration for the philosophy of the newly opened CRC and the desire to keep his collection together.

"I think the freedom in a university museum is much stronger than in many museums and galleries,” Janssen said. “It is important to expose young people to good art while they are still developing their tastes and sensibilities.”

He also likes the fact that the CRC embraces an open storage concept that enables visitors to see the majority of the collection, instead of having it hidden away in vaults most of the time. “It keeps the work alive,” he added.

The donation consists of Janssen’s entire ceramics collection, with the exception of the works in his home – which are a promised gift to ASU – and his historic and contemporary Native American collection. Except for select pieces earmarked for the ASU Art Museum, the bulk of Janssen’s Native American work will be donated to the National Museum of the American Indian, which opened this fall on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

Janssen’s ceramics collection was acquired over a decade with his late partner, ceramist R. Michael Johns. To be officially named The Stéphane Janssen and R. Michael Johns Collection, it includes work by major American and international ceramists, including Robert Arneson, Akio Takamori, Jun Kaneko, Viola Frey, Adrian Saxe, Richard Notkin, George Ohr, Ruth Duckworth and Harrison McIntosh, as well as a variety of emerging artists.

The Janssen gift is the third major donation of private ceramics collections to the ASU Art Museum in the past six years. His gift follows that of the Anne and Sam Davis collection in 1998, and the promised gift of the Sara and David Lieberman collection two years ago.