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| Museu Nacional de Arte Oriental | |
|---|---|
| Name | Museu Nacional de Arte Oriental |
| Established | 1928 |
| Location | Lisbon, Portugal |
| Type | Art museum |
Museu Nacional de Arte Oriental is a museum in Lisbon, Portugal, dedicated to Asian art and material culture. The institution houses collections spanning East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Islamic world, attracting scholars and visitors interested in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, Cambodian, and Persian objects. Founded in the early 20th century, the museum engages with international partners, curatorial networks, and conservation bodies to present rotating exhibitions and long-term displays.
The museum was founded from private collections and donations associated with figures such as the collector José de Figueiredo, institutions including the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, and benefactors active in Lisbon cultural circles like the Instituto de Alta Cultura and the Academia das Ciências de Lisboa. Early acquisitions drew on contacts with dealers in Shanghai, Bombay, Canton, and Calcutta, while diplomatic ties with embassies from Japan, China, and India facilitated gifts and loans. Through the mid-20th century the museum expanded during periods influenced by Portuguese political shifts involving the First Portuguese Republic, the Estado Novo, and post-1974 cultural reforms linked to the Carnation Revolution. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries the institution collaborated with international museums such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Museum, the Musée Guimet, and the Freer Gallery of Art to repatriate, research, and exhibit Asian collections.
The museum occupies a purpose-adapted building in the [Lisbon] area historically connected to 18th- and 19th-century urban development influenced by architects and planners who worked after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, including urban projects related to the Pombaline architectural style. Architectural interventions have involved conservation architects trained in approaches advocated by bodies such as ICOMOS and influenced by debates at the Venice Biennale of Architecture and UNESCO heritage charters. Recent renovations incorporated climate-control systems meeting standards used by the Getty Conservation Institute and design solutions comparable to galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Rijksmuseum. Landscape and courtyard spaces reference design precedents found in Portuguese colonial architecture and Asian garden traditions documented by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Arnold Arboretum.
The permanent collections include ceramics, bronzes, lacquerware, textiles, paintings, sculptures, and ritual objects from regions such as China, Japan, Korea, India, Nepal, Tibet, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Iran, Iraq, and the Ottoman Empire. Highlights comprise Song and Ming dynasty ceramics, Edo period ukiyo-e prints associated with artists connected to the Ukiyo-e movement, Joseon dynasty porcelain examples, Gupta and Chola period sculpture, Khmer stone carving linked to Angkorian reliefs, and Persian miniature painting from Safavid workshops. The numismatic and manuscript holdings feature Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, and Chinese calligraphic pieces comparable in scholarship to collections at the British Library, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and the National Library of China. Donor-related ensembles trace provenance through archives akin to those preserved by the Smithsonian Institution and the National Museum of Korea, while acquisition histories engage with legal frameworks like international conventions negotiated at UNESCO.
The museum organizes temporary exhibitions in collaboration with institutions such as the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, the National Museum of Asian Art (Smithsonian), the National Palace Museum (Taipei), and the Shanghai Museum. Programs include curatorial series focusing on themes connected to collectors documented in the Monumenta Nipponica and exhibition catalogues produced with university presses like Cambridge University Press, Harvard University Press, and Oxford University Press. Public programs encompass lectures featuring scholars affiliated with universities such as Universidade de Lisboa, SOAS University of London, Columbia University, and Kyoto University, as well as workshops involving conservators from the Getty Conservation Institute and educators partnered with the European Museum Academy.
Research initiatives address provenance research, materials analysis, and comparative studies drawing on laboratory techniques developed at facilities like the CERN-associated instrumentation networks and conservation science teams at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Collaborative projects have included cataloguing efforts with the International Council of Museums (ICOM), digitization partnerships with the Europeana network, and doctoral research supervised in cooperation with institutions including the University of Porto and the École du Louvre. Conservation of lacquer, silk, and paper relies on methodologies informed by case studies published in journals such as the Journal of Conservation and Museum Studies and undertaken alongside conservation departments at the V&A Conservation Department and the National Museum of Korea.
Located in Lisbon, the museum is accessible via public transport nodes served by agencies like Carris (Lisbon) and the Lisbon Metro, and lies within reach of landmarks such as the Belém Tower, the Jerónimos Monastery, and the Alfama district. Visitor services include guided tours, educational materials for schools coordinated with the Direção-Geral da Educação curricula, and accessibility provisions consistent with European Union standards promoted by the European Disability Forum. Ticketing, opening hours, and special event scheduling follow policies comparable to those of the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian and the Fundação Oriente.
Category:Museums in Lisbon