Arthur M. Sackler Museum
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
The Arthur M. Sackler Museum joins the Fogg Museum and the Busch-Reisinger Museum as part of the Harvard Art Museums. Its postmodern building was designed by British architect James Stirling and opened to the public in October 1985.
In 2008, the 32 Quincy Street building that formerly housed the Fogg and Busch-Reisinger collections closed for a major renovation project to create a new museum building designed by architect Renzo Piano that will house all three museums in one facility. During the renovation, selected works from all three museums are on display at the Sackler.
Collection
The Sackler holds world-renowned collections of archaic Chinese jades and Japanese surimono, as well as Chinese bronzes, ancient ceremonial weapons, and Buddhist cave-temple sculptures; Chinese and Korean ceramics; and Japanese woodblock prints, calligraphy, narrative paintings, and lacquer boxes.
The Sackler's collections of ancient and Byzantine art include notable works in all media from Greece, Rome, Egypt, and the Near East. They are especially strong in the pottery of ancient Greece, and in small bronzes and coins from throughout the ancient Mediterranean world.
The museum also holds works on paper from Islamic lands and India, including paintings, drawings, calligraphy, and manuscript illustrations, with particular strength in Rajput art, as well as significant Islamic ceramics from the 8th through 19th century, including Samanid epigraphic wares, luster wares from Iraq, Iran, and Spain, and İznik Ottoman wares.
Many of the works in the Sackler Museum can be accessed as part of the Harvard Art Museums' online Collection Search, which features 250,000 works of art.
