Passport to Asia: Works from the Collection

The newly installed gallery features nearly 100 works including paintings, sculptures, ritual objects, ceramics, manuscripts, carvings, metalwork, and decorative arts that entered The Museum’s collection as early as the 19-teens through as recently as the 2000s. Some works were purchased by The Museum while others came as gifts from Katharine and William A. Arnold, Susan Keim Montgomery, and Mrs. M. P. V. R. Biddle, among others.

Highlights of the selection, which spans more than 2,500 years, include: a group of twelve Japanese temple guardian figures from the sixteenth century, a rare ritual jade cup with poetic inscription from the reign of Emperor Qianlong (1711-1799), a group of Tang Dynasty tomb figures, a stunning standing Chinese bodhisattva Guanyin from the fourteenth century, a fine Japanese painting of Jizo Bosatsu on Lotus from the early fifteenth century, a bronze tripod ritual wine vessel (jue) from the twelfth century BC, and a group of elaborately carved Chinese rhinoceros horn libation cups.

Many works have not been on public view recently, including a five-panel Japanese screen painting from the seventeenth century, a group of early Chinese paintings, and several illuminated nineteenth-century palm leaf manuscripts from Thailand.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website