The Harvard University Art Museums have embarked on a series of exhibitions showcasing a decade of recent additions to the collections. The exhibitions will showcase masterpieces of Asian art, Old Master and contemporary prints and drawings, paintings, sculptures, and photographs, covering virtually every area of the institution’s collecting and offering a rare examination of the collecting practices of the nation’s leading teaching and research museum. The six exhibitions will open in succession beginning in March 2000 and will be held throughout the three Harvard University Art Museums: the Fogg Art Museum, the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, and the Busch-Reisinger Museum.

A Decade of Collecting: Asian Acquisitions, 1990-1999, showcases about one quarter of the 400-plus works acquired by the Department of Asian Art over the past 10 years. It includes representative examples from three large and important collections: the Mr. and Mrs. Gregory Henderson Collection of Korean Ceramics (acquired by the museum in 1991), the Nelson Goodman Collection of Korean Paintings (acquired in 1994), and the Elaine Ehrenkranz Collection of Japanese Lacquer Boxes (acquired in 1996), three major acquisitions that raised Harvard to preeminence in those respective fields. Other magnificent gifts, bequests, and purchases--works of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese painting, Chinese and Korean ceramics, two very important Chinese Buddhist sculptures, and a Korean textile--are featured, showing the broad range and impressive depth of the Sackler's recent acquisitions. In addition, two recently reattributed works (a rare Chinese porcelain of the Chenghua period, 1465-1487, and a recently conserved Japanese album of painting and calligraphy dating to 1509) are featured, showing how recent scholarship has elevated choice works from Harvard's Asian collection. These many acquisitions and discoveries have enhanced the museum's teaching mission by providing ample high-quality material for display and study.

The Arthur M. Sackler Museum at Harvard houses superb collections of Asian art. Among its treasures are the world's finest collections of archaic Chinese jades and Japanese surimono (private, luxury-edition woodblock prints), as well as outstanding holdings of Chinese bronzes, ceremonial weapons, and Buddhist cave-temple sculpture; Chinese and Korean ceramics; Japanese woodblock prints, calligraphy, narrative paintings, and lacquer boxes; and Southeast-Asian illuminated manuscripts.