Background
Grace Nicholson (1877-1948), was a collector and dealer of Native American and Asian arts
and crafts. Nicholson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on December 31, 1877, the
daughter of attorney Franklin Nicholson (1851-1891) and Rose Dennington Nicholson
(1855-1878). At the age of thirteen, following the death of her parents, Nicholson went to
live with paternal grandparents, William Nicholson and Mary Nicholson. After graduating from
the Philadelphia Girls' High School in 1896, Nicholson worked as a stenographer and in other
jobs in Philadelphia. In 1898, Nicholson met Mr. Carroll S. Hartman (1857-1933); she began
working for Hartman in 1900, first as a promoter for "The Battle of Manila" cyclorama, and
later in an amusement parlor on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, New Jersey. In late 1901,
with money from a small inheritance, Nicholson moved to Pasadena, California. In early 1902,
she began purchasing Native American baskets and artifacts, opening a store at 41-43 South
Raymond Avenue in Pasadena. Within a few years, she moved her combined home, store, and
gallery to nearby 46 North Los Robles Avenue. Carroll Hartman had also relocated to Southern
California, and Nicholson employed him as a buyer for her store. Nicholson traveled
throughout Arizona, California, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington studying and purchasing
Native American arts and crafts and establishing relationships with the artists, whom she
often interviewed and photographed. Hartman often accompanied her on these expeditions,
taking photographs as well. Nicholson kept extensive diaries and notes on her buying trips
through Native American territory, especially of the Karok, Klamath, and Pomo Indians. Her
subjects included Native American legends, folklore, vocabulary, tribal festivals, basket
making, the art trade, and living conditions. Native American artists with whom Nicholson
established long-term business and personal connections included Pomo basket weaver Mary
Benson (1878-1930) and her husband William Benson (1862-1937), as well as Elizabeth Hickox
(1875-1947) of the Karuk tribe. Because of her ethnographic work, the American
Anthropological Association elected Nicholson to membership in 1904. She facilitated the
purchase of artifacts by museums such as the Peabody Museum at Harvard University, the Field
Museum in Chicago, the Southwest Museum of the American Indian Collection, Autry National
Center, Los Angeles, and the University of Pennsylvania Museum. In the 1910s, as the market
for Native American artifacts declined, Nicholson began expanding her work as an Asian art
dealer. In 1912, Nicholson purchased additional land next to her Los Robles Avenue property
and, in 1924, hired architects Marston, Van Pelt, and Maybury to renovate the property and
construct a Chinese-style palace. Completed in 1929, it became known as the "Grace Nicholson
Treasure House of Oriental Art." Following a 1929 trip to China and Japan, Nicholson dealt
almost exclusively in Asian arts and craft. In 1943, facing financial difficulties,
Nicholson entered into an agreement with the City of Pasadena and the Pasadena Art Institute
that transformed her Los Robles building into the Pasadena Art Institute. In 1954, the
Institute was renamed the Pasadena Art Museum; it occupied the building until 1970, when it
moved to a new Pasadena location and became the Norton Simon Museum. The Pacificulture
Foundation founded the Pacific Asia Museum in the "Treasure House" in 1971. Nicholson
continued to live at 46 North Los Robles, but she moved her shop to a smaller building at 45
South Euclid Avenue in Pasadena in 1944, and her assistants Thyra H. Maxwell and Estelle
Bynum assumed growing responsibilities for it. Nicholson died on August 31, 1948. Following
Nicholson's death, her Native American Indian art collection was left to Maxwell and Bynum,
the executors of her estate; her 12,000-item Asian art collection was auctioned by the
Curtis Gallery in November 1950 and purchased by Los Angeles businessman Edker Pope. In
1968, Maxwell donated Nicholson's papers and photographs to The Huntington Library and sold
Nicholson's collection of baskets made by the Bensons, as well as a large collection of
correspondence and myths from William Benson, to the Museum of the American Indian, Heye
Foundation, of New York City (now part of the National Museum of the American Indian,
Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C.).