About
The Asian Art Museum is home to one of the largest and most extensive permanent collections of Asian art in the world, representing all major Asian countries and traditions and the global Asian diaspora. The collection contains more than 20,000 objects, some of which are as much as 6,000 years old. Galleries devoted to the arts of South Asia, Iran and Central Asia, Southeast Asia, the Himalayas, China, Korea, and Japan feature a regularly rotating display of more than 2,000 objects from the collection.
Soyoung Lee is The Barbara Bass Bakar Director and CEO of the Asian Art Museum. In January 2019, Abby Chen was appointed as the Head of Contemporary Art.
The museum originated from a donation to the City of San Francisco by Chicago millionaire Avery Brundage, a major collector of Asian art. The Society for Asian Art, incorporated in 1958, was formed to secure Brundage's collection for the city. San Francisco voters passed a $2.75 million bond for the construction of a new wing of the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in Golden Gate Park to house the museum, which opened in 1966.Brundage continued to make donations to the museum, including the bequest of all his remaining personal collection of Asian art on his death in 1975. In total, Brundage donated more than 7,700 Asian art objects to San Francisco.
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