Arts of Asia Gallery

The Arts of Asia gallery features an outstanding selection of objects from Auckland Museum’s Asian decorative arts collection, widely considered one of the finest and most comprehensive collections in New Zealand. It features some 7,000 objects from the Neolithic period to the present day.

The gallery itself covers the period from ca 1000 AD and includes the arts of China, Japan and Korea, Indonesia and Thailand, Turkey and Iran, and India, Nepal and Tibet.

Arts of Asia considers the rich diversity found within existing traditions, the import and export of objects and ideas, and the development of symbols, motifs, and language in the material arts. Most of the works on display are functional wares, informed by an aesthetic that emanates from the natural world and seeks to achieve a balance between humankind, nature and the cosmos.

The Arts of Asia gallery will include, for the first time, textiles and garments such as a fine Japanese temple hanging, an elegant Chinese dragon robe (longpao) as well as contemporary garments by Rei Kawakubo of the Japanese designers ‘Comme des Garçons’.