Short Bio

Roger Goepper (1925–2011) was a German art historian, director of the Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst (Museum of East Asian Art) in Cologne from 1966 to 1990, and Professor of East Asian Art History at the University of Cologne. He studied art history, Sinology, and Japanology, alongside Sanskrit and Tibetan, at the Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität in Munich, under teachers including Max Loehr, Herbert Franke, and Horst Hammitzsch.

During his tenure as director, Goepper led the design and construction of the new museum building at the Aachener Weiher, realised between 1967 and 1977 in collaboration with the Japanese architect Maekawa Kunio. As curator, university professor, translator, and intercultural ambassador, he shaped the European reception of East Asian and Tibetan Buddhist art across the second half of the twentieth century like few others in the field.

Goepper’s research on Tibetan Buddhist art, in particular on the Alchi Sumtsek, was foundational. His monograph on the temple, with photographs by Jaroslav Poncar, proposed an early-thirteenth-century chronology for the monument that has since been corroborated by subsequent research and additional inscriptional evidence.