ASIAN ART

Numbering over 8,000 works of art, the heart of the museum’s collection is Asian. This focus was established in the 1920s through the gift of The Murray Warner Collection of Art by Gertrude Bass Warner, which included pieces from China, Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia. The Asian collection and can be characterized as having a dynamic balance between high aesthetic achievement and broad material culture. The collection complements the holdings found at the Seattle Asian Art Museum, to our north, and San Francisco's Asian Art Museum, to the south.

Various portions of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art’s holdings have been examined and assessed in recent years by a number of scholars, all of whom expressed surprise at the collection’s depth and breadth. The Chinese holdings are our largest, with focus strengths in the late-Imperial art of the Qing Dynasty. Many of these are works of art from the time of the Qianlong Emperor (1736-95), an important period for artistic development in China. The Chinese holdings are highlighted by one of the largest jade assemblages outside of China – a seven-foot jade pagoda believed to have been presented to the Emperor Yongzheng to commemorate the birth of his son, the future Qianlong Emperor, Gaozu.

According to John Vollmer, textile scholar and former curator at the Royal Ontario Museum, the museum’s collection of robes, mainly Qing dynasty robes from the Imperial court, is one of the most outstanding collections in North America.

The Chinese furniture collection features two Qing-Dynasty Imperial thrones from the Forbidden City in Beijing that were purchased during the Chinese Revolution.

Both the Japanese and Korean works have received high praises, as well. There are smaller groups of objects from Cambodia and Mongolia, as well as Indian, primarily Gandharan, and Persian works.


Copyright © Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon. All rights reserved.