August 30, 2003

“If you have just enough time to see one museum in San Francisco, I would unhesitatingly recommend the new Asian Art Museum. It’s the finest thing to have happened to San Francisco this year,” my host Ajmal, who stays in the picturesque San Raphael just across the Golden Gate Bridge, enthused.

It was a pleasant day — most days are pleasant in San Francisco — when I looked admiringly at the beaux arts-style building, overlooking the Civic Center Plaza. Built in 1917 the building housed the city’s Main Library before the museum moved from Golden Gate Park, where it was an annex to the M.H. de Young Art Museum. Quite clearly the quality and the increasing quantity of the exhibits called for larger and exclusive premises.

The old library building contributes to the atmosphere of the of the historic Civic Center district, one of USA’s most complete collection of beaux arts buildings set in a formal plan. Without disturbing its innate beauty, the renowned Italian architect Gae Aulenti designed the new premises of what is officially known as The Asian Art Museum — Chong Moon Lee Center for Asian Art and Culture.

The Korean born Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Lee, donated the largest chunk of money — $15 million in the $160 million project. Almost a third of the amount went to seismic upgrading of the building in view of the city’s experience with a devastating earthquake. Incidentally, the long list of donors, displayed in the foyer, also includes two Pakistanis Isha and Asim Abdullah. That did my heart good.

The building and the new improvisations are so attractive and noteworthy that there are not just museum tours but also architectural tours organized every day. On the morning of July 29 I saw two groups taking rounds of the premises, one comprised small children, who were being shown the exhibits on the three floors, the other consisted of teenagers who were explained the nuances of the structure under the daylight peering through the glasses on the vaulted ceiling of the foyer.

The museum started in 1966 on its old premises as a gift to San Francisco by the Chicago-based industrialist, Avery Brundage. His home town wasn’t too enthusiastic about displaying Brundage’s collection. The city fathers must have repented their lack of interest in the offer because the present collection, comprising 15,000 objects spanning 6,000 years of history, has grown into one of the largest museums in the western world devoted exclusively to Asian art.

It has been a long journey since Brundage offered about 7,000 art pieces from the subcontinent and the Far East. The pieces are placed in a 40,000 square feet of gallery display space. This does not include the coffee shop, the gift shop, the state-of-the-art storage and conservation rooms, and the office space.

For a museum of this size and with so much to offer one can’t really assimilate anything if one were to go through the different parts in just a few hours, so I decide to breeze through the Chinese and Japanese section, but devote much more time to the Islamic and the subcontinental sections. The first two pieces to attract my attention were the Seated Buddha and the Standing Buddha, both procured from the Peshawar Valley. The largest collection of Buddha is quite understandably from Bihar in India. The Hindu deities on display are largely from India and Bangladesh.

In the paintings section, the first piece to clamour for attention was the Persian translation of the Mahabharata. Titled Razmnama, it came from Burhanpur in Madhya Pradesh. Perched on a wall close to it was a Kangra painting that recreates the battle between Pandavas and Kauravas.

An intricately designed window frame dating back to somewhere between 1650 and 1750 came from what is now Pakistan. I remember having seen similar window frames on my trips to the smaller towns of Punjab.

A small window encased Sasavian emperor Shapuri’s coins. Then there is a Zoroastrian fire altar. A beautifully calligraphed Holy Quran, in gold and colours on paper, with leather binding, came from Iran and is dated in the vicinity of 1550, the Safavid period. No less attractive was a page from a manuscript of Jami’s Yusuf-o-Zulaykha. That too is calligraphed in ink and gold on a paper with ornate designs of animals and foliage on the margins.

The Sikh kingdom painting section had some intriguing displays too. Most fascinating were the drawings by Emily Eden, the sister of the Lord Aukland, the viceroy of India in the 1830s. These were printed by L. Dickinson in London.

Two paintings — Guru Nank talking to emperor Babar and Babar visiting the Sikh saint — were mere flights of fancy because the two never met.

On level two was an illustration of Ferdousi’s classic, Shahnamah,. It is in ink, colours and gold and dates back to approximately 1610. On the same wall as this was a 300- year-old palm leaf page from a “manuscript on erotics”.

A gift from Dr and Mrs Hoshang Tyabji to the museum is a 1718-manuscript of the Quran. It was painstakingly and lovingly calligraphed in ink, colours and gold on paper. There are delicate motifs all over on the page.

As I breezed through the sections devoted to the Far East I saw a palanquin, which came from Japan. There had lacquer, gold and mother of pearl on wood and metal. The porcelain section had some amazing pieces from the Ming dynasty. I was lucky to get a picture of a covered jar with a lotus pond.

The museum also has regular events, not just restricted to visual art. An evening of Afghan music was on the cards. But before that there were going to be a couple of special exhibitions. The one which was on in July was titled Gorgeous Textiles of Japan. Accompanying the display were demonstrations of textile arts such as the braiding cords used on samurai armour and silk velvet design in Kyoto.

Going through its programmes for the coming months, I agreed with the contents of the folder given with the admission ticket. It described the museum as San Francisco’s newest and most exciting cultural destination.