“Before I had my stroke, I would often go to the Asia Society’s galleries. Why? I’d go there to look and get inspired. I’ve used Buddha figures a lot in my work, and the Asia Society has the best collection of Buddhas-- Japanese Buddhas, Indonesian Buddhas. I also go to the Korean galleries at the Met, which have a very private feel to them. I get in touch with my Asian background at both of these wonderful galleries, which are so open to the public.”
--Nam June Paik

Beyond the Met’s sprawling galleries, New York is home to a wide array of both public and private collections of astonishing Asian art. The newly renovated Asia Society and Museum is a key destination for the true fan of Asian art. In 1956, the Asia Society was founded by John D. Rockefeller 3rd with the belief that art is a key factor in cultivating better understanding between America and Asia. Art exhibitions became a lively focus of the overall programming of the institution, with the first show taking place on the opening night of Asia House, the original name of the gallery spaces. In 1979, Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd granted the Asia Society nearly 300 works acquired over 25 years of visiting Asia and collecting Asian art. These masterworks in various media from South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia, dating from 2000 b.c. to the 19th century and ranging from paintings to ceramics to sculpture, reflect the breathtaking diversity of Asian arts and cultures.

The Rockefellers’ collection now constitutes the basis of the Society’s permanent collection. While smaller than the American collections of other well-known patrons of Asian art (namely Charles Lang Freer and Avery Brundage), its large number of acknowledged masterpieces makes it one of the most significant assemblages of Asian art in the United States. Works include an 11th-century copper statue of a kneeling woman from Cambodia, a many-armed copper sculpture of an Indonesian goddess dating from the 9th century, and a 17th-century watercolor-and-ink courtly painting from the Malwa Region in India.

No question, impressive permanent collections of traditional Asian art abound in Manhattan. A short East Side tour devoted to Asian art spanning centuries and continents could begin with a visit to the Islamic and Indian miniature paintings that are part of the permanent collections at the J. Pierpont Morgan Library -- the personal library designed for the turn-of-the-century industrialist by the firm of McKim, Mead & White and home to more than a thousand such works, located on East 36th Street. Eleven blocks north, the Japan Society Gallery, located at the Japan Society -- an institution created to foster enlightened relations between Japan and the West -- feature ukiyo-e prints, paintings, ceramics, and folk art, as well as design and architecture. Three-dimensional mandalas, colorful, complex diagrams of the Buddhist spiritual universe (usually paintings), grace the gallery of Tibet House, an organization dedicated to increasing understanding of Tibet. The permanent collection of the city’s singular design museum, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, located uptown on East 91st Street, includes charming Indonesian shadow puppets and superb examples of Asian textiles.

Outside of Manhattan, the Brooklyn Museum of Art boasts one of America’s most significant collections of Korean art. That the early 20th century was indeed a golden time for collectors of Asian art is reflected in the museum’s holdings. Many of the most important works seen in the Brooklyn Museum of Art, including the stupendous Korean art collection and the works from Iran’s Qajar dynasty, were unearthed by the museum’s first curator of ethnology, Stewart Culin, during expeditions into East and South Asia in 1903. Around 1911, a medical missionary named Dr. Albert L. Shelton was collecting the rich cache of Tibetan art that is now housed at the Newark Museum (including a Buddhist altar that was consecrated by the Dalai Lama), a museum that includes pieces from Bali, Burma, Sri Lanka, and Mongolia. Housed in charming buildings and terraced stone gardens styled after Himalayan monasteries, the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art on Staten Island features exhibitions and cultural programs related to Tibet and other Asian civilizations.

On the commercial front, exquisite pieces of antique Asian art, furniture, and porcelain are sold by private dealers on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, mainly from a slew of tony galleries in and around the East ’60s and Madison Avenue. Kaikodo, housed in an elegant townhouse, is a must-see for its fine works of Chinese art; it also publishes an excellent scholarly journal complete with beautiful color plates. Indeed, if you are inspired by the once-private collections on display in New York’s institutions, you will find that you can actually acquire almost any sort of Asian art piece in New York.