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  Location within San Francisco County | |
| Established | 1966 |
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| Coordinates | 37°46′49″N122°25′00″W / 37.780276°N 122.416577°W /37.780276; -122.416577 |
| Type | Asian andAsian Americanart |
| Director | Soyoung Lee (2025–present) |
| Architect | Building (1917):George Kelham Museum interior (2003):Gae Aulenti |
| Website | www |
| Area | 200,000-square-foot (19,000 m2) |
TheAsian Art Museum of San Francisco – Chong-Moon Lee Center for Asian Art and Culture[1] is amuseum inSan Francisco,California that specializes inAsianart. The museum building and its permanent collection are owned by the City of San Francisco.
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 globalAsian diaspora.[2][3][4][5] The collection contains more than 20,000 objects, some of which are as much as 6,000 years old.[6] Galleries devoted to the arts ofSouth Asia,Iran andCentral Asia,Southeast Asia, theHimalayas,China,Korea, andJapan feature a regularly rotating display of more than 2,000 objects from the collection.[7]
Soyoung Lee is The Barbara Bass Bakar Director and CEO of the Asian Art Museum.[8][9] In January 2019, Abby Chen was appointed as the Head of Contemporary Art.[10]
The museum originated from a donation to the City of San Francisco by Chicago millionaireAvery 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.[11] San Francisco voters passed a $2.75 million bond for the construction of a new wing of theM. H. de Young Memorial Museum inGolden Gate Park to house the museum, which opened in 1966.[12] 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.[2]
As the museum's collection grew, the facilities in Golden Gate Park were no longer sufficient to display or even house the collection. In 1987, MayorDianne Feinstein proposed a plan to revitalize Civic Center that included relocating the museum to the Main Library. In 1995,Silicon Valley entrepreneurChong-Moon Lee made a $15 million donation to launch the funding campaign for a new building for the museum.[13]
During its last year in the park, the museum was closed for the purpose of moving to its new location opposite theSan Francisco Civic Center. Formerly the main San Francisco city library, thisBeaux-Arts building designed byGeorge Kelham in 1917 is one of the city’s most important historic structures.[14] It was renovated under the direction of Italian architectGae Aulenti,[15][5] including a seismic upgrade scheme to the building involvingbase isolation, and reopened on March 20, 2003.[16][17]
In October 2011, three years after the appointment ofJay Xu as director, the museum expanded its mission to include:
This shift in direction was accompanied by a new logo. Designed by the branding agencyWolff Olins, the logo is an upside-down 'A,' representing the idea of approaching Asian art from a new perspective; in the context of mathematics, it is a symbol meaning "for all."[3]
Large-scale exhibitions of contemporary art at the Asian Art Museum since 2011 include:
Despite founder Avery Brundage's professed goal of creating a "bridge of understanding" between the U.S. and Asia, a deeper inquiry revealed that he heldracist,sexist, andanti-Semitic beliefs that entirely contradicted the mission and values of the museum. In June 2020, museum director Jay Xu wrote in an open letter to the public that “We must contend with the very history of how our museum came to be,” acknowledging that Brundage “espoused racist and anti-Semitic views” and that the museum must respond to “a society structured around white supremacy.”[25][26] The same year, the museum removed a statue of Brundage from the lobby where it had stood for five decades and launched a thorough re-examination of his controversial legacy.[27][25][26]
In March 2016, the museum announced an expansion project adding more than 15,000 square feet across two levels, including a new 8,500-square-foot pavilion intended to accommodate large works of contemporary art; a 7,200-square-foot rooftop sculpture garden; and the Koret Education Center, a multifunctional classroom for educational and public programming.[28][29][30][4][31]
The Akiko Yamazaki and Jerry Yang Pavilion opened in July 2023 with an inaugural exhibition by Japanese art collectiveTeamLab. TheEast West Bank Art Terrace opened in August 2023; it is the newest and largest rooftop art venue in San Francisco.[32][33][34][35]
In 2023, the Asian Art Museum presentedThe Heart of Zen, an exhibition featuringSix Persimmons, a famed 13th-century Chinese ink painting "hailed as an illustration of Zen Buddhism's greatest teachings"[36] and designated an Important Cultural Property by the Japanese government.[37] This exhibition marked the first timeSix Persimmons had ever been displayed outside of Japan.[37][38] TheNew York Times reported that "an 800-year-old ink painting, regarded as the “Zen Mona Lisa,” has made a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the United States."[37]
The Asian Art Museum has received accreditation from theAmerican Alliance of Museums' Museum Assessment Program, a peer-based validation of an institution’s operations and impact.[39]
In 2017, the museum's 2016–2017 exhibitionThe Rama Epic: Hero, Heroine, Ally, Foe was the recipient of three major museum industry awards: a Special Achievement Award for Interpretation in the Excellence in Exhibition from the Association of Art Museums; an Award for Excellence from theAssociation of Art Museum Curators & AAMC Foundation for the exhibition catalog; and a Bronze MUSE Award for Audio Tours and Podcasts.[40]
To promote its 2017 exhibitionFlower Power, the museum assembled a crowd of 2,405 people to form the shape of a lotus flower, setting a newGuinness World Record for "largest human flower."[41]
The museum was awarded theJapanese Foreign Minister’s Commendation for their contributions to promotion of cultural exchange through art between Japan and the United States on December 1, 2020.[42][43]
In 2024, curator Abby Chen received the Distinguished Art Educator Award from theNational Art Education Association's Asian Art and Culture Interest Group.[44]
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![Buddha dated 338, the earliest known dated Buddha sculpture produced in China[45]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aSaturnism.jpg)
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AJapanese tea house is displayed on the second exhibition floor of the museum. This teahouse was built inKyoto, disassembled, shipped to San Francisco and reconstructed in the museum by Japanesecarpenters.[46] The name of the tea house can be seen on a wooden plaque "In the Mist" located next to the Tea House on the second floor of the museum, The calligraphy on this wooden plaque is based on the calligraphy byYamada Sobin and commissioned byYoshiko Kakudo, the museum's first curator of Japanese art. The Tea House was designed by architect Osamu Sato as a functioning teahouse, as well as a display case. It is complete with an alcove for the display of a scroll and flowers, an electric-powered sunken hearth used in winter for the hot water kettle, and a functioning preparation area (mizuya) with fresh running water and drain.[47]
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