UMMA is home to the largest collection of Asian art in the state of Michigan, with more than 4,500 objects that range in time from the third millennium BCE to the present and represent cultures from Afghanistan to Java and Japan. Special strengths include Chinese and Japanese painting as well as Chinese and Korean ceramics.
India is well represented by religious sculpture and miniature painting, while the holdings in Southeast Asian art are primarily in Buddhist sculpture.
The collection is actively growing, with recent major gifts of Japanese prints and textiles, Korean ceramics, Chinese folk art, and Southeast Asian sculpture and decorative arts.
Chinese Art
The Chinese painting collection at UMMA is justly renowned for its breadth and depth, with more than 200 works representing major artistic movements from the thirteenth century to modern times. Ming period painting in both the courtly and literati styles is a special strength, with works by such luminaries as Wu Wei, Zhou Chen, Wen Zhengming, and Sheng Maoye, to name only a few.
There are nearly 400 examples of Chinese ceramics in the Museum, ranging in date from the Neolithic period to the twentieth century, and particularly rich in pieces of the Han (second century BCE–second century CE) and Song (tenth to thirteenth century) periods.
Other clusters of interest include bronze mirrors, Buddhist sculpture, calligraphy, rubbings (particularly of the famous second-century Wu Family Shrine), nineteenth-century textiles, and twentieth-century folk art.
Korean Art
UMMA’s collection of Korean art grew more than five-fold in 2004, when the Museum acquired nearly 250 objects, including ceramics, brassware, and furniture. With this addition, UMMA is able to present a comprehensive survey of Korean ceramics—Korea’s most distinct and enduring art form—spanning from the third to the nineteenth centuries. The Korean collection superbly complements the Museum’s strengths in Chinese and Japanese ceramics. The Korean collection continues to expand with recent acquisition of lacquerware, painting, and calligraphy.
Japanese Art
The Japanese painting collection at UMMA is especially strong in paintings of the Edo period (1615–1868), especially the literati and naturalist schools (with artists such as Ike Taiga, Hine Taizan, Matsumura Goshun, and Nakabayashi Chikutō, among others), as well as works of artists affiliated with the Ôbaku School of Zen. The Edo-based Ukiyo-e tradition is represented by a few superb paintings and a large selection of prints, especially of onnagata, or Kabuki actors in female roles.
The ceramic collection is notable for tea wares, including a tea caddy once owned by the grand tea master Kobori Enshū and teabowls by Raku Ryōnyū and Raku Tan’nyū; a large group of works by Seifū Yohei, a peerless craftsman who worked for the imperial atelier in Kyoto in the late nineteenth century; and a selection of vessels by the leading studio potters of the 20th century, such as Arakawa Toyozō, Hamada Shōji, Kaneshige Tōyō, Kawai Kanjirō, Katō Tōkurō, and Takahashi Rakusai III.
In addition, the textile collection was greatly expanded with the recent acquisition of more than 70 pieces of magnificent kimono and obi created in the 20th century.
South Asian Art
Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Tibet
The South Asian sculpture collection spans two millennia and a wide geographical range. Among the earliest works are female fertility figures and Buddhist reliefs dating to the first through fifth centuries, from Gandhara, Mathura, and Nagarjunakonda. The medieval period (sixth through thirteenth centuries) is represented by stone temple sculptures or bronze votive statues of the major Hindu deities from Kashmir in the north to Bengal in the east and Tamil Nadu in the south. From later periods, there are several dated Jaina bronze sculptures, and several hundred miniature folk bronzes, representing Hindu deities or village heroes.
The Museum collection includes over 100 Indian paintings, most of which are from Rajput centers in Rajasthan or the Punjab, but also include Jaina and Mughal works. The most recent additions to the collection include several major works of stone sculpture, a Tibetan Kadampa stupa of the thirteenth century, and village textiles.
Southeast Asian Art
Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar and Vietnam
The UMMA collection of Southeast Asian art is focused on Buddhist and Hindu sculpture from Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar and Indonesia. The recent major gift from the Doris Duke Foundation helped to expand the Buddhist art collection, which includes a complete set of Thai Buddhist altar and lacquerware, Chinese ceramics made for Thai market, and Burmese sculpture.
There is also a small but significant collection of ceramics, including Neolithic wares of the Ban Chieng Culture in Thailand; Sawankhalok ware, also from Thailand; and Vietnamese trade ware.
Middle Eastern Art
UMMA’s collection of Middle Eastern art consists of works from Syria, Iran, Iraq, North Africa, and Turkey, among other regions, dating from as early as 1,000 BCE to the 21st century. The collection contains works in various media, including ceramic vessels and tiles, calligraphy, textiles, and metalwork and features many works of fritware—a type of ceramic made from quartz and white clay that imitates Chinese porcelain.
Highlights of UMMA’s Middle Eastern collection include an extraordinary pair of 13th-century Turkish bronze candlestick holders, a stunning 17th–18th-century fritware underglaze blue-and-white platter from Iran, and a 12th–13th-century Syrian stone cenotaph.
Perhaps the most important Islamic work in the collection is a complete 15th-century manuscript of the Shahnama (The Book of Kings), now known as the Ann Arbor Shahnama, while the most recent addition to the collection is a triptych by the contemporary Syrian calligrapher, Khaled al’Saa’i (b. 1970) entitled Resurrection.