Across Asia: Arts of Asia and the Islamic World

The Walters Art Museum presents a landmark installation of its Asian and Islamic collections, offering new ways to examine and experience both Asian and Islamic art. For the first time at the Walters, visitors can view over 400 artworks from across the Asian continent together in a contiguous space, including art from Islamic cultures spanning West to South Asia. Across Asia: Arts of Asia and the Islamic World expands the connectivity of the Walters’ Asian and Islamic art collections and features visitor favorites as well as works which have previously not been on view.

Themes that are both culturally specific and universal to the human experience, including devotional practice, consumable goods, the natural world, and innovation, are woven throughout the galleries. Visitors will encounter historical examples of architecture, calligraphy, ceramics, cloisonné, lacquerware, manuscripts, metalwork, painting, sculpture, and textiles. The installation also includes a 19th-century Buddhist pulpit (thammat) from Thailand, one of the only known Thai pulpits in a U.S. museum.

The Walters collection of Asian art comprises about 9,000 objects and encompasses works spanning 5,000 years of artistic traditions from diverse cultures and regions, most notably Japan, Korea, China, India, Nepal, Tibet, Myanmar, Thailand, and Cambodia. The collection of Islamic art, comprising some 1,200 objects, is one of the richest in the United States with particular strengths in Persian, Turkish, and Mediterranean cultures, as well as Islamic South Asia. Visitors can continue to see other renowned works of art from India, Nepal, and Tibet in The John and Berthe Ford Gallery.

The book Across Asia and the Islamic World, edited by Proser, with essays by curators Dany Chan, Ashley Dimmig, and Adriana Proser, was published in conjunction with the opening as the first in an innovative series of Walters collection-focused publications.