Join Curator of Asian Ethnology, Dr. Laurel Kendall, for a behind-the-scenes tour of the American Museum of Natural History’s Hall of Asian Peoples and highlights of the Museum’s Chinese ethnographic collection in storage.
Open To Friends Of The Gallery Members Only
The American Museum of Natural History houses the finest collection of Asian ethnographic objects in the Western hemisphere, and is the product of decades of collecting as complete a record as possible of the cultures in the Pacific rim.
A large percentage of the Museum’s China collection was amassed between 1901 and 1904 by Bethold Laufer, a distinguished Sinologist and linguist. Laufer was hired by the Museum to travel and collect representative objects used in daily life, agriculture, folk religion, medicine, and in the practice of such crafts as printing, bookbinding, carpentry, enamelware, ceramics, and laquerware. Thus the Museum now holds one of the finest archives of late-Qing art and ethnographic objects.
Image number: 6772 “Brass figures from Tibet in compact storage, Anthropology Department,”
Finnin, Denis, AMNH Digital Special Collections
