Resources

An introduction to the arts of Bali.

Watch a timelapse video of Asian Art Museum and the Rubell Family Collection staff installing Boat by artist Zhu Jinshi. Experience Boat at the Asian Art Museum during the exhibition, 28 Chinese (June 5–August 16, 2015).

Watch the installation of two monumental Japanese bronze lion sculptures on granite plinths outside the museum’s front entrance on Larkin Street.

Preparators at the Asian Art Museum install a 2100-pound bronze bell for the Bell Ringing Ceremony on December 31. In this annual tradition at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, visitors, led by a Buddhist priest, mark New Year by ringing a 2100-lb., sixteenth-century Japanese bronze bell originally from a temple in Tajima Province in Japan. Now part of the museum’s collection, the bell will be struck 108 times with a large custom-hewn log. According to custom in several Buddhist cultures, this symbolically welcomes the New Year and curbs the 108 mortal desires (bonno) which, according to Buddhist belief, torment humankind.

Sneak a peek behind the scenes of the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco as staff and Ship Art employees install a colossal statue of a man in the museum for the Roads of Arabia exhibition.

A Maharaja’s magnificent silver and enamel carriage is hoisted into the Asian Art Museum through the large rear windows of the building via crane, and then carefully uncrated and installed for the upcoming Maharaja exhibition. Time lapse video compresses approximately two full days of work into less than two minutes. This carriage was on view during the exhibition, Maharaja: The Splendor of India’s Royal Courts (October 21, 2011–April 8, 2012).

Asian Art Museumn’s Art Speak interns collaborate and create guides to the San Francisco Bay Area.

All Chinese characters are made up of a number of strokes. These strokes are painted in a prescribed order, depending on the script. Generally, strokes move from top to bottom and from left to right.

Commissioned for our 50th anniversary, Liu Jianhua’s striking artwork “Collected Letters” links the Asian Art Museum building’s past as the city’s Main Library with the museum’s distinctly forward-looking mission.

Inro with map of Japan, 1670-1722. By Shiomi Masanari (Japanese, 1647 – approx. 1722), Lacquered wood with sprinkled metallic powder (maki-e) decoration. Gift of Dr. Joseph Kushner, 2014.6. Photograph © Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.