The Arthur M Sackler Museum houses one of the finest collections of Asian Art in the United States. The collection is particularly strong in the arts of East Asia, but also includes modest holdings of works from India, Central Asia and Tibet, and Southeast Asia; the greatest strengths lie in the fields of Chinese archaic jades and bronze ritual vessels, Buddhist art, and ceramics; Korean paintings and ceramics; and Japanese lacquer, calligraphy, printed books, and woodblock prints. The collection includes approximately 16,000 works, some 6,000 of which are woodblock prints.

A major addition to the collection was made in 1991, with the acquisition of the Mr. and Mrs. Gregory Henderson collection of Korean ceramics, which comprises nearly 150 examples representing every major ceramic type produced on the Korean peninsula between the fifth and nineteenth centuries A.D.; the Henderson collection is considered the most comprehensive assemblage of Korean ceramics outside East Asia. Another major addition came in 1994, with the acquisition of the Nelson Goodman collection of Korean paintings; the more than thirty album leaves in the group range from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries and reflect the major literati styles of the period. The 1996 gift of the Elaine Ehrenkranz Collection of Japanese Lacquer Boxes significantly enriched the museums’ holdings of Japanese decorative arts. Dating from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries, the 56 boxes document the full range of styles, decorative techniques, subject matters, and aesthetic preferences of Muromachi, Momoyama, and Edo-period lacquers. The museums will feature the Ehrenkranz lacquers in a special exhibition in the fall of 1998.

Founded in 1892, the Harvard University Art Museums have exhibited Asian art since 1895, when the then newly completed Fogg Art Museum first opened its doors. (The present Fogg building opened in 1927.) The Asian collections are now displayed in seven galleries of the Arthur M. Sackler Museum. The four fourth-floor Asian galleries are arranged as semi-permanent exhibitions of the most important works in the collection, while the three second-floor Asian galleries are used for a regular program of changing, thematic exhibitions. The Sackler’s large, first-floor, temporary gallery is used for special exhibitions, including both traveling shows organized by other museums and loan exhibitions arranged by Harvard Art Museum curators. Examples of the latter include First Under Heaven: The Henderson Collection of Korean Ceramics (December 1992-March 1993), Hare’s Fur, Tortoiseshell, and Partridge Feathers: Chinese Brown- and Black-Glazed Ceramics, 400-1400 (December 1995-March 1996) and Worlds Within Worlds: The Richard Rosenblum Collection of Chinese Scholars’ Rocks (May-July 1997); both of those exhibitions toured nationally after closing at Harvard. The Asian collections are stored in the Sackler Museum; works not on display may be seen by appointment with the Asian department (495-2391).