The primary exhibition space is the museum’s second floor with nine distinct pavilions, each with a series of galleries showcasing certain subject areas. The collection is particularly strong in Chinese antiquity, preColumbian objects from Central and South America, South Asian artifacts, and a growing inventory of modern and contemporary art.
Between the pavilion galleries are walkways that act as interstitial spaces where subject areas blend together. For example, a 16th-century Buddhist statue featuring Chinese and Indian features representing Buddhism’s expansion into China is next to a white plastic sculpture of a boy caricature by the 21st-century Chinese cartoonist Danny Yung.
Called “Tian Tian Xiang Shang,” Yung named his sculpture after a phrase popularized by Mao Zedong during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. It literally translates to “Day Day Up,” or “work hard and make progress every day.” The artist recalls the phrase appeared in outrageously large letters on school walls, which was “quite threatening to the schoolchildren.”