Maia Henderson; sculptor gave Korean collection to museum

MAIA HENDERSON (courtesy of Patricia Saunders)

In art history, Maria-Christine Elisabeth (von Magnus) Henderson and her husband, Gregory, will perhaps best be remembered for donating one of the West's premier collections of Korean ceramics to the Harvard University Art Museums.

But others outside of the art world and friends she made in her global travels will remember Mrs. Henderson as a gracious friend, a sculptor, and, by the students who lived in her home, a grandmother figure. They also recall festive gatherings and lively conversation at the Hendersons' elegant home on Rock Hill in Medford.

Mrs. Henderson, born into an aristocratic banking family in Berlin that had to outwit both Hitler and the Soviets to survive during World War II, died at Lawrence Memorial Hospital in Medford on Dec. 14 of respiratory failure. She was 84.

Until her illness, friends said, she had been planning a Christmas celebration with a 12-foot tree lit by real candles in the Old World style, baking her old-style German stollen, and using her monogrammed table linen for the feast she would prepare for guests.

"Maia is one of the few women I have known whom I would classify as a real grande dame," said Steven Gaskin of Sherborn, president of the Asian Art Society of New England, using Mrs. Henderson's nickname.

"Maia was not a fragile, shy little old lady," Gaskin said. "A few years ago, she traveled across the entire Silk Route - a rugged trip, even today."

Heather Anderson, a neighbor who worked with Mrs. Henderson in a group that promotes interest in dance and music, recalled that Mrs. Henderson often allowed groups to give concerts in her home, and how the gatherings had "an international flavor and a wide variation of guests." As a member of the Chromatic Club of Boston, which encourages young musicians, she hosted more than 50 benefit concerts at her home.

The Henderson home was a fitting venue. Part of its interior is from an 1890s Federal-style house dismantled in Providence, and it is on the National Registry of Historic Places, according to Andrew Maske, former curator of Japanese art at the Peabody Essex Museum, who once lived in the house.

Her friends were of varying ages. "Maia Henderson was a friend and patron, but more than that. She was like a grandmother to me," Jocelyn Clark said in an e-mail from Juneau, Alaska. As a student at Harvard University, Clark lived in her home.

"People were very important to Maia," said Maske, now a professor of art history at the University of Kentucky. "She absolutely celebrated people's differences."

Mrs. Henderson found strength in the challenges her family had overcome, relatives said.

Elisabeth von Magnus, one of Mrs. Henderson's five nieces, said that Mrs. Henderson's father died when she was 4, so her mother summoned a sister from Mexico, where the family also had roots, to help care for her children.

At 13, Mrs. Henderson danced with a large group of girls at the opening ceremonies of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. In her teens, she studied art at the Hochschule der Kunste in Berlin.

But World War II was difficult for the family. "Maia's mother concealed the family's background from the children until after the war," Elisabeth said in an e-mail from Germany, referring to the family's Jewish ancestry.

When the Soviets marched into Berlin in 1945, her mother hid her in a grain field. The family was given two hours to abandon the house and to take with them only what they could carry in a handcart, relatives said.

She met Harvard graduate Gregory Henderson of Cambridge while he was posted at the US Embassy in Berlin. They were married in 1954 in Japan, where he was cultural attache at the US consulate general. He was posted in South Korea in 1958, and they lived in Seoul before coming to the United States in 1963.

While in Korea, Mrs. Henderson worked as a sculptor and taught at Seoul National University. According to Sung-Yoon Lee, who teaches international politics at The Fletcher School at Tufts University, Mrs. Henderson created a number of award-winning sculptures, among them her bronze series representing the Stations of the Cross for St. Benedict Church in Seoul.

The Hendersons assembled most of their Korean collection while living there. Richard D. Mowry, head of the department of Asian art at Harvard's Arthur M. Sackler Museum, said it comprises nearly 150 objects and spans from the first century AD through the 19th century.

Mr. Henderson died in 1988, and in 1991 Mrs. Henderson gave their Korean collection to Harvard. Masterworks from the collection have been exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In 2006, Mrs. Henderson took two nieces on the Trans-Siberian Railroad from Mongolia to Moscow. "It was her last great wish," her niece said.

A memorial service will be held Feb. 19 at 12:15 p.m. in Memorial Church at Harvard University.