Asian Art

About the Collection

The Department of Asian Art oversees works from the world’s largest continent, including the arts of East, South, Southeast, and West Asia, the Himalayas, the Islamic World, and the Ancient Near East. With over 13,000 objects, the collection spans from the Neolithic period (2500 BCE) to today and contains the oldest works in the museum.

The Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876, the first official World’s Fair held in the United States, sparked widespread interest in Asian art and material culture. This enthusiasm led to some of the first purchases for the newly established museum, including lacquerware, furniture, ceramics, and other works of art from Chinese, Japanese, Moroccan, and Persian exhibitors. Today, the collection is particularly strong in architecture, East Asian ceramics, and South Asian paintings.

The Department of Asian Art is actively expanding its holdings of both historical and contemporary works, with a focus on artists using historical techniques, and on contemporary craft that engages with the museum’s historic collections.

Notable Objects

• Architectural interiors from China, Japan, and Iran, including the Japanese “Evanescent Joys” teahouse, the only teahouse by Ogi Rodo outside of Japan.
• A magnificent seventeenth-century Chinese Palace Hall with elaborately painted beams and tall ceilings, the only reception hall in an American museum.
• A 700-year-old imperial lacquered wood coffered ceiling from the Zhihua temple in Beijing, one of only two outside of China.
• A dynamic collection of varied media, including paintings, sculptures, ceramics, textiles, furniture, and works on paper, both traditional and contemporary art are featured in the galleries including:
  • A finely decorated 400-year-old Iranian ‘Marquand’ Medallion carpet.
  • An imposing Thai sandstone figure of Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of infinite compassion.
• The sixteenth-century South Indian Temple Hall ensemble—the only one of its kind publicly displayed outside the Indian subcontinent.
• Stone sculpture, in particular from Hindu and Jain temples (sixth to sixteenth century).
• Painted works on paper from illustrated manuscripts and books made at royal workshops (fourteenth to nineteenth century).
• Devotional painting on cloth and metal sculpture from Nepal and Tibet (ninth to nineteenth century).
• Arts of village and tribal communities often made for ritual use (eighteenth to twentieth century) and contemporary painting and sculpture by artists of tribal heritage.