The Asian Art Museum: Chong-Moon Lee Center for Asian Art and Culture

For years the Asian Art Museum was one of San Francisco’s best-kept secrets. It contained what was clearly the most important collection of art in the city. It was the largest museum devoted to Asian art in the Western world, but its collection was housed in a wing of another museum in an out-of-the-way location far from the centre of the city. Where only a small fraction of the museum’s holdings could be displayed. In 1997, the Asian Art Museum moved into a landmark 1916 building designed by George W. Kelham. The task of retaining the building’s historic qualities while invigorating it with bold new elements was given to Milanese architect Gae Aulenti, whose previous projects had included transforming a beaux arts train station into the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. For the Asian Art Museum, Aulenti opened up the old building, bringing in a flood of light and providing new orientation and sightlines. She created a first-floor piazza as a public gathering place, introduced massive V-shaped skylights that unify and illuminate the entire structure, added a playful interior-exterior escalator, and created a new suspended floor to display more of the museum’s collection. The result is an attractive and resourceful makeover blending Beaux Arts traditionalism with sleek European modernism. This new addition to the Art Spaces series delves into the history and design of one of America’s most unique and significant museums.