- Asian Art Museum of San Francisco
The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco is a
museum inSan Francisco ,California ,United States . It has one of the most comprehensive collections ofAsia nart in the world.Until recently housed at the de Young in
Golden Gate Park , the Asian Art Museum re-opened onMarch 20 ,2003 in the former San Francisco citylibrary building opposite the San Francisco Civic Center, renovated for the purpose under the direction of Italianarchitect Gae Aulenti . The collection has approximately 17,000 works of art and artifacts from all major Asian countries and traditions, some of which are as much as 6,000 years old. Major galleries are devoted to the arts ofIndia ,China , western Asia (including Persia),South-East Asia ,Korea andJapan . There are 2,500 works on display in the permanent collection.The
museum owes its origin to a donation to the city of San Francisco by Chicago millionaireAvery Brundage , who was a major collector of Asian art. The Society for Asian Art, incorporated in 1958, was the group that formed specifically to gain Avery Brundage's collection. The museum opened in1966 as a wing of theM. H. de Young Memorial Museum inGolden Gate Park . Brundage continued to make donations to the museum, including the bequest of all his remaining personal art collection on his death in 1975.In total, Brundage donated more than 7,700 Asian art objects to San Francisco, i.e. just over half the museum's current collection. In
1995 ,Silicon Valley entrepreneurChong-Moon Lee made a $15 million donation to launch the funding campaign for a new building for the museum.The museum has become a focus for special and travelling exhibitions, including: the first major Chinese exhibition to travel outside China since the end of
World War II (in1975 ); an archaeological exhibition which attracted 800,000 visitors over an eight week period; an exhibition on Wisdom and Compassion opened by the Dalai Lama in1991 ; and a display of the famous terra-cotta warriors of China's ancient city ofXi'an .Galleries
Green_Tea_in_Tetsubin at the caféTibet an drawing ofMahakala , in the exhibit halls
BuddhaSamurai armour on displayee also
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49-Mile Scenic Drive
*List of museums with major collections of Asian art External links
* [http://www.asianart.org Museum official website]
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