Travel, Collecting, and Museums of Asian Art in Nineteenth-Century Paris examines a history of contact between modern Europe and East Asia through three collectors: Henri Cernuschi, Emile Guimet, and Edmond de Goncourt. Drawing on a wealth of material including European travelogues of the East and Asian reports of the West, Ting Chang explores the politics of mobility and cross-cultural encounter in the nineteenth century. This book takes a new approach to museum studies and institutional critique by highlighting what is missing from the existing scholarship -- the foreign labors, social relations, and somatic experiences of travel that are constitutive of museums yet left out of their histories. The author explores how global trade and monetary theory shaped Cernuschi's collection of archaic Chinese bronze. Exchange systems, both material and immaterial, determined Guimet's museum of religious objects and Goncourt's private collection of Asian art. Bronze, porcelain, and prints articulated the shifting relations and frameworks of understanding between France, Japan, and China in a time of profound transformation. Travel, Collecting, and Museums of Asian Art in Nineteenth-Century Paris thus looks at what Asian art was imagined to do for Europe. This book will be of interest to scholars and students interested in art history, travel imagery, museum studies, cross-cultural encounters, and modern transnational histories.

The volume looks at how South Asian art was sourced for external appreciation at a variety of institutions in Europe, North America, and Asia from the mid-19th century onward. These essays speak to the colonial legacies that created such collections but that now must be viewed though a post-colonial lens. The volume also addresses contemporary concerns for todays's museums: collecting, building and practices, provenance, and repatriation.

Travel, Art and Collecting in South Asia questions what are ideas of vertiginous collecting, art-making and museums as expanded fields, including wonder houses and missionary museums (or museobuses) in Britain and South Asia. If the historiography of British India has privileged photography and the 'Imperial Picturesque', the emphasis here is on the formation of a creole modernity, one that considers the relationship between art and labour, including pearlescence and pearl fishing in Sri Lanka, and the iconoclastic/fetish debates and forms of collecting amongst missionaries. Eaton explores these themes alongside the genealogies and modernities of white(ness) in contemporary curating and amateur female practice, and how the museobus or museum as a unique object has informed the work of contemporary artist group Raqs Media Collective. This book will be of interest to scholars in art history, Asian history, and imperial and colonial history.

"Asia Society is proud to present a revised and expanded catalogue of its world-renowned Collection, Treasures of Asian Art: The Asia Society Museum Collection. Celebrating the 60th anniversary of Asia Society in New York, this elegant book explores the breadth and depth of the Collection, emphasizing its strengths by grouping artworks to allow for broader discussion of the connections between historic and contemporary art. The initial section presents the Collection's traditional works, divided by region, many of which are part of the original bequest from Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd. Following is a section devoted to contemporary works, including those made by Asians living abroad. The pieces are presented as part of a narrative, rather than as discrete objects, thus allowing readers to consider history, region, religion, and technique as contextual touchstones in their appreciation of these treasures. Lavishly illustrated, this book acknowledges the enormous transformations that have taken place in Asian cultures, while also commemorating the continent's magnificent contributions throughout the history of art."--

The collection forms the basis for The Asia Society, founded by John D. Rockefeller 3rd in 1956. Although small relative to other such collections (it comprises 285 objects), it contains a high proportion of acclaimed masterpieces and is especially strong in ceramics and sculpture. The text introduces the general reader to concepts and historical trends and incorporates scholarly opinions on attributions and dates. An introductory essay by Sherman E. Lee, the Rockefellers' professional advisor for the collection, discusses their motives and methods. Some 300 color plates visualize the works in this first catalog of the complete collection. 9.5x12" Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Beyond the Book is the first book dedicated to studies of rare East Asian materials collected by individuals and institutions in North America. It sheds new light on the two centuries of cultural exchanges between East Asia and North America and provides fresh clues for East Asian studies scholars in their hunt for raw research materials.