List of Museums of Asian Art

This is a list of museums with major collections of Asian art.

  1. Palace Museum *, Beijing, China
    1,800,000 objects
  2. National Museum of China *, Beijing, China
    1,050,000 objects
  3. National Palace Museum *, Taipei, Taiwan
    700,000 objects
  4. National Museum of Korea, Seoul, South Korea
    150,000 objects
  5. Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK
    130,000 objects
  6. Shanghai Museum *, China
    120,000 objects
  7. National Museum, Japan
    120,000 objects
  8. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA
    ~100,000 objects
  9. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA
    60,000 objects
  10. American Museum of Natural History, New York, USA
    60,000 objects
  11. British Museum, London, UK
    55,000+ objects
  12. Musée du quai Branly, Paris, France.
    58,000 objects
  13. Musée Guimet, Paris, France
    ~50,000 objects
  14. Field Museum, Chicago, USA
    ~50,000 objects
  15. Honolulu Museum of Art, Honolulu, USA
    ~40,000 objects
  16. Art Institute of Chicago, USA
    35,000 objects
  17. Freer Gallery of Art / Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, D.C., USA
    26,500 objects
  18. Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Berlin, Germany
    20,000 objects
  19. Brooklyn Museum, New York, USA
    ~20,000 objects
  20. Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, USA
    18,000 objects
  21. Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Cambridge, MA, USA
    16,000 objects
  22. Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, USA
    10,450 objects

Several famous and distinguished collections, including the Cleveland Museum of Art, Field Museum (Chicago), Museum of Archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania, Los Angeles County Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Seattle Asian Art Museum do not provide adequate numerical information for their significant collections. This list, therefore, is only provisional.

Some collecting institutions combine their ethnographic, cultural, and artistic materials together in their total holdings. Such is the case of the British Museum, for example. It would be nearly impossible to distinguish between these types of objects (e.g. "fine arts") in developing a quantitative, as opposed to qualitative, ranking of this kind.

* These museums specialise in only Chinese items; the collections are not comprehensive for all Asia.

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