Asian Art Museum

The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco is a museum in San Francisco, California, United States. It has one of the most comprehensive collections of Asian art in the world.

Until 2003 the museum shared a space with the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park; during its last year in the park it was closed for the purpose of moving to its new location, and it re-opened on March 20, 2003 in the former San Francisco city library building opposite the San Francisco Civic Center, renovated for the purpose under the direction of Italian architect Gae Aulenti. Lord Cultural Resources, a cultural professional practice, was also commissioned to undertake a three-part sequence of planning studies for the relocation of the Museum.

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 of South Asia, West Asia (including Persia), Southeast Asia, the Himalayas, China, Korea and Japan. 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 millionaire Avery 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 collection. The museum opened in 1966 as a wing of the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in Golden Gate Park. 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.