• Source: Wilma Cannon Fairbank

Wilma Denio Cannon Fairbank (April 23, 1909 – April 4, 2002) was an American art historian and diplomat who studied Chinese art and architecture.




Early life and education


Wilma Cannon was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the daughter of Walter Bradford Cannon and Cornelia James Cannon. Both of her parents were notable; her father was a physiologist and a medical school professor, and her mother was a writer and feminist. Her sister Marian Cannon Schlesinger became an artist and writer, and married historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Their brother Bradford Cannon was a noted reconstructive surgeon who specialized in treating burns.
Cannon graduated from Radcliffe College in 1931, and did some graduate work there from 1937 to 1939.




Career


Cannon was briefly an apprentice to Diego Rivera after college, and before traveling to China to marry in 1932. During World War II she worked in Washington with the State Department's China section. After the war, from 1945 to 1947, she was a cultural attaché at the American embassies in Chongqing and Nanjing. She was a member of the Institute for Research in Chinese Architecture. After her husband became a professor at Harvard University, she was a faculty wife and mother, which she later called "a terrific drop in status". She continued her research and writing, and gave lectures on Chinese art.




Publications


Fairbank's work appeared in academic journals including The Far Eastern Quarterly, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, and Artibus Asiae.

"The Offering Shrines of 'Wu Liang Tz'ŭ'" (1941)
"A Structural Key to Han Mural Art" (1942)
"Current Trends in Japanese Studies of China and Adjacent Areas" (1953, with Akira Fujieda)
"Han Mural Paintings in the Pei-Yuan Tomb at Liao-Yang, South Manchuria" (1954, with Masao Kitano)
"Piece-mold craftsmanship and Shang bronze design" (1962)
Adventures in Retrieval: Han murals and Shang bronze molds (1972)
America's Cultural Experiment in China, 1942-1949 (1976)
A Pictorial History of Chinese Architecture: A Study of the Development of Its Structural System and the Evolution of Its Types (1984, with Ssu-chi'eng Liang)
Liang and Lin: Partners in Exploring China's Architectural Past (1995)




Personal life and legacy


Wilma Cannon married Harvard historian John King Fairbank in 1932, in Beijing. They adopted two daughters, Laura and Holly. Her husband died in 1991, and she died in 2002, at the age of 92, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "She made a major contribution to our understanding of ancient Chinese art and architecture," said colleague Philip Kuhn when she died. The Peabody Essex Museum has a collection of her correspondence and notebooks.




References

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