Bruce Maclaren

Bruce MacLaren is Vice President and Global Head of Chinese paintings and calligraphy at Bonhams.

Based in New York, Bruce leads the international Chinese painting team, holding dedicated auctions in New York and Hong Kong, in addition to supporting Chinese paintings sold at 11 of Bonhams' global salesrooms. Among the important consignments he has brought to Bonhams are Album of Landscapes by Wang Hui (1632-1717), which achieved $3,999,000 in May 2015, and Fish Pool in the Mountain City by Wu Guanzhong (1919-2010), which made $1,963,000 in May 2012. From October 2019 to March 2022, he oversaw the sale of the Reverend Richard Fabian collection of Chinese painting and calligraphy in a series five single-owner sales in Hong Kong and New York. The sales brought US$10,000,000 and boasted a 93% cumulative sell through rate for nearly 300 works.

Before joining Bonhams in 2010, Bruce spent ten years as a curator of Chinese art at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. At the museum, he curated well-received exhibitions such as Perfect Imbalance: Exploring Chinese Aesthetics and The Secret World of the Forbidden City. He also was the assistant curator of Yin Yu Tang, the relocation and interpretation of an 18th-century 16-bedroom merchant's house from Anhui, China, to Salem. From 2006-07, Bruce collaborated with the Honolulu Art Academy for the exhibition, catalogue and symposium in support of New Songs on Ancient Tunes, Chinese Paintings from the Reverend Richard Fabian Collection.

Bruce holds a Bachelor's degree in Chinese and Asian Studies from Connecticut College and a Master's degree in Art History from the University of Kansas, specialising in Chinese painting and calligraphy.

Outside Bonhams, Bruce has authored several articles on Chinese art and culture, and he has been an invited speaker at symposiums and lectured at Northeastern University, Simmons College, the Royal Ontario Museum, Oxford University, San Francisco State University, and in Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China.