Asian Art

The dancing Shiva and the two gigantic Japanese temple guards are undoubtedly the best known and most eye-catching works in the Rijksmuseum’s Asian art collection. But there are many more treasures − from India and Japan, from Indonesia and China, and from countries like Korea, Bangladesh and Cambodia.

This book highlights some of the masterpieces in this wide-ranging collection. Superb objects that reflect the different regional styles, as well as costly, sophisticated pieces of decorative art tailored by Asian craftsmen to European tastes and produced solely for export. Many of these fine and often intriguing objects can be seen in the Rijksmuseum’s Asian Pavilion. The Chinese and Japanese porcelain is housed in the Special Collections section in the undercroft of the main building and there are galleries in the seventeenth and eighteenth-century circuits displaying export art.

This book does full justice to the diversity and richness of the Rijksmuseum’s magnificent collection of Asian art.