James Cahill (art historian)

James Francis Cahill (Chinese: 高居翰; pinyin: Gāo Jūhàn; August 13, 1926 – February 14, 2014) was an American art collector and historian who taught at the University of California, Berkeley.

He then studied art history under Max Loehr at the University of Michigan, earning his master's in 1952 and Ph.D. in 1958.

[3] In 1973, he was one of the first American art historians to visit China after President Richard Nixon's historic meeting with Chairman Mao Zedong the year before.

[3] In the 1990s, the American financier Oscar Tang purchased The Riverbank, a famous painting attributed to the 10th-century Chinese Southern Tang dynasty painter Dong Yuan, and donated it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City.

In 1999, Cahill set off an explosive debate when he announced that the painting was a fake by the 20th-century master painter and forger Zhang Daqian.

In 2010 he was awarded the Charles Lang Freer Medal by the Smithsonian Institution for his lifetime contributions to art history.