One of the biggest collections of Asian art in the Western hemisphere, the Asian Art Museum is located in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, California, USA. It is housed in a thoroughly un-Asian building surrounded by mock-Classical statuary, and is adjacent to the M. H. DeYoung Museum of Art and the Japanese Tea Garden. Admission to the museum lets you into some other park attractions for free (not the tea garden, though). The museum includes collections from China, Tibet, India, Iran, Korea, and Japan. Unfortunately, the museum is somewhat disappointing. Layout and presentation is uninspired, mostly stuff in glass boxes, easily surpassed by the Asian portions of the Smithsonian or even the Nelson-Atkins. There is essentially no multimedia aspect to the exhibits, barring the occasional video. Perhaps they're just in a holding pattern until the big move, but that's really no excuse.
Their website is at www.asianart.org, where you can also read about their after-hours program (probably the only innovative aspect of the museum, currently) that hosts evening parties incorporating Asian pop culture.
The museum moved to the fabulous Beaux Arts building that formerly housed the San Francisco City Library, in March 2003.
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