The museum's collection of more than 30,000 objects representing 5,000 years of history and culture from every region of the world includes important works from Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities, Asian art, Latin American art, and Contemporary art. (1825–1905) painting on display entitled
Admiration (1897).
Art of the Ancient Mediterranean World The museum houses one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of ancient Egyptian, Near Eastern, Greek and Roman art in the southern United States. The Egyptian collection hold objects from the Pre-dynastic through the late Roman and Byzantine periods. It also houses an important and rare collection of Greek and Roman sculpture that encompasses portraits, funerary sculpture, and mythological subjects.
Asian Art The Asian art collection is housed in the Lenora and Walter F. Brown Asian Art Wing, a 15,000 square foot suite of galleries that opened in 2005. Over the past 70 years, the museum's Asian art collections have grown to become one of the most impressive in the United States, including more than 1,500 works from
China,
India,
Japan,
Korea,
Laos,
Mongolia,
Myanmar,
Nepal,
Pakistan,
Sri Lanka,
Thailand,
Tibet, and
Vietnam.
wood sculpture of the
Bodhisattva Guanyin.
Latin American necklace from 200 AD and
Zenú earrings from 800 AD. On display in
Latin American Art The museum has one of the most comprehensive collections of Latin American art in the United States. The collection is housed in the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Latin American Art, which opened to the public in 1998. The center offers an overview of artwork from Mexico, Central and South America, and many counties of the Caribbean, and one of the world's most important repositories of Latin American folk art with a collection numbering over 7,000 objects.
Contemporary A significant portion of the museum's Contemporary collection is devoted to post-World War II American painting and sculpture, including an emphasis on modernist abstraction. In addition, it has always been committed to the collection of Contemporary Texas Art, and it features paintings and sculpture produced by Texas artists form the last 1960s to present day. The collection includes two sculptures by San Antonio-born
Bonnie MacLeary.
Oceanic from the
Iatmul people of
Papua New Guinea The museum also contains a collection devoted to
Oceanic art, found on the fourth floor of the Nancy Brown Negley West Tower. Works from
Papua New Guinea and
French Polynesia comprise a large part of the collection.
Maori,
Hawaiian, and
Aboriginal Australian art can also be found in the collection. ==Former streetcar service==