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The CollectorSan Francisco’s Asian Art Museum shifts focus from antiquities of sometimes dubious origin to contemporary works

Institution moves beyond colonial-era acquisitions to focus on the classic Asian art of the future

New pavilion and terrace exhibition spaces attract major donations from Silicon Valley and Asian patrons

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Lam Tung-pang’s A Day of Two Suns. Photo: courtesy of the artist and Blindspot Gallery

Published: 1:00am, 20 Mar 2020Updated: 3:37pm, 20 Mar 2020

Who doesn’t like to visit the Louvre, the British Museum and the Met in New York, at least when they have not been closed to combat the spread of the coronavirus? But let’s face it, a lot of Western museums are salt in the wounds of nations and peoples who suffered long spells of oppression under European and United States political and economic domination.

Pieces such as the Amaravati marbles, in the British Museum, just a floor above their more famous Greek counterparts, and a trove of looted pieces from the Summer Palace in Beijing, at the Chateau de Fontainebleau, are obvious examples of colonial exploits. Many items in the founding collections of Western institutions were sold to dealers and collectors when battle-weary nations were unable to guard their cultural heritage from the greed and ignorance of local people.

The Collector is ambivalent about the whiff of toxic nationalism that often accompanies claims for restitution. Nonetheless, it is clear Western museums need to address the sometimes ignoble chapters of their origin stories, and show they are guarding the artefacts for everyone and not just for the host country.

The Asian Art Museum (AAM) in San Francisco, which is also temporarily closed, is stuffed full of enough stone statues, temple fittings and old paintings to raise the hackles of the restitution camp. Among the items donated by late Chicago industrialist Avery Brundage to the museum’s foundation collection in 1966 is the oldest dated Chinese Buddha statue, a “textbook” item from AD338 that is much studied by cultural historians.

Jay Xu, director of the Asian Art Museum, in San Francisco. Photo: Nora Tam/SCMP

Housed in the West’s favourite cloak of cultural authority – a grand, neoclassical building – the museum has long been regarded as the quintessential archive of Eastern faded glories. Then about 10 years ago, the AAM board and Jay Xu, its director since 2008, decided it was time for a change. Speaking to the collector ahead of the unveiling of the new AAM, Xu explains the transformation.