Ma Chengyuan, 77; saved art during Cultural Revolution

SHANGHAI -- Ma Chengyuan, former president of the Shanghai Museum who saved priceless artifacts from marauding Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution, died Sept. 25. He was 77.

No cause of death was given.

Mr. Ma, an authority on ancient Chinese bronzes, joined the museum soon after its founding in 1952 and helped select items for its original collection of about 13,000 ancient Chinese bronze works, porcelain, paintings, jade, calligraphy, furniture, and other artifacts. He published more than 80 books and academic papers on the bronzes.

The collection enjoyed official protection until the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, when Red Guard members inspired by Mao Zedong's call for the destruction of all remnants of prerevolution China rampaged through the homes of collectors. Mr. Ma slept in his office to take phone calls from desperate collectors and dispatched museum staff members to protect and catalog artifacts.

Anticipating the Red Guards' arrival at the museum, Mr. Ma ordered staff members to disguise themselves as Red Guards and paint revolutionary slogans over glass display cases.

But as fighting broke out among guard factions, Mr. Ma was seized by museum staff members and imprisoned in a storage room. He was tortured by being dropped repeatedly on the museum's marble floor to make him confess to having sold museum property for personal gain. He never confessed and was later sent to a labor camp.

Mr. Ma returned to Shanghai in 1972 to organize an exhibition to tour the United States after President Nixon's visit to China.