Founding The museum originated from a donation to the City of San Francisco by Chicago millionaire
Avery Brundage, a major collector of Asian art. The Society for Asian Art, incorporated in 1958, was formed to secure Brundage's collection for the city. San Francisco voters passed a $2.75 million bond for the construction of a new wing of the
M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in
Golden Gate Park to house the museum, which opened in 1966.
Relocation As the museum's collection grew, the facilities in Golden Gate Park were no longer sufficient to display or even house the collection. In 1987, Mayor
Dianne Feinstein proposed a plan to revitalize Civic Center that included relocating the museum to the Main Library. In 1995,
Silicon Valley entrepreneur
Chong-Moon Lee made a $15 million donation to launch the funding campaign for a new building for the museum. During its last year in the park, the museum was closed for the purpose of moving to its new location opposite the
San Francisco Civic Center. Formerly the main San Francisco city library, this
Beaux-Arts building designed by
George Kelham in 1917 is one of the city’s most important historic structures. It was renovated under the direction of Italian architect
Gae Aulenti,
2011 Mission Shift In October 2011, three years after the appointment of
Jay Xu as director, the museum expanded its mission to include: • Increasing the visibility of Asian American artists; • Collecting and exhibiting
contemporary art; and • Providing a platform for cultural regions of Asia that have been historically underrepresented in museums.
Contemporary Art Large-scale exhibitions of contemporary art at the Asian Art Museum since 2011 include: •
28 Chinese (2015) •
First Look: Collecting Contemporary at the Asian (2015) •
Kimono Refashioned (2019) •
teamLab: Continuity (2021–2022) •
Carlos Villa: Worlds in Collision (2022) •
Takashi Murakami: Unfamiliar People—Swelling of Monsterized Human Ego (2023–2024) •
Hallyu! The Korean Wave (2024–2025)
Reckoning with Founder's Legacy Despite founder Avery Brundage's professed goal of creating a "bridge of understanding" between the U.S. and Asia, a deeper inquiry revealed that he held
racist,
sexist, and
anti-Semitic beliefs that entirely contradicted the mission and values of the museum. In June 2020, museum director Jay Xu wrote in an open letter to the public that “We must contend with the very history of how our museum came to be,” acknowledging that Brundage “espoused racist and anti-Semitic views” and that the museum must respond to “a society structured around white supremacy.” The same year, the museum removed a statue of Brundage from the lobby where it had stood for five decades and launched a thorough re-examination of his controversial legacy. The Akiko Yamazaki and Jerry Yang Pavilion opened in July 2023 with an inaugural exhibition by Japanese art collective
TeamLab. The
East West Bank Art Terrace opened in August 2023; it is the newest and largest rooftop art venue in San Francisco.
The Heart of Zen In 2023, the Asian Art Museum presented
The Heart of Zen, an exhibition featuring
Six Persimmons, a famed 13th-century Chinese ink painting "hailed as an illustration of Zen Buddhism's greatest teachings" and designated an Important Cultural Property by the Japanese government. This exhibition marked the first time
Six Persimmons had ever been displayed outside of Japan. The
New York Times reported that "an 800-year-old ink painting, regarded as the “Zen Mona Lisa,” has made a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the United States." In 2017, the museum's 2016–2017 exhibition
The Rama Epic: Hero, Heroine, Ally, Foe was the recipient of three major museum industry awards: a Special Achievement Award for Interpretation in the Excellence in Exhibition from the Association of Art Museums; an Award for Excellence from the
Association of Art Museum Curators & AAMC Foundation for the exhibition catalog; and a Bronze MUSE Award for Audio Tours and Podcasts. To promote its 2017 exhibition
Flower Power, the museum assembled a crowd of 2,405 people to form the shape of a lotus flower, setting a new
Guinness World Record for "largest human flower." The museum was awarded the
Japanese Foreign Minister’s Commendation for their contributions to promotion of cultural exchange through art between Japan and the United States on December 1, 2020. In 2024, curator Abby Chen received the Distinguished Art Educator Award from the
National Art Education Association's Asian Art and Culture Interest Group. == Collection highlights ==