Pacific Asia Museum, Asian art museum in Pasadena, United States.
The Pacific Asia Museum is an art museum in Pasadena, California, housed in a building designed in the style of a Chinese palace and dedicated to works from Asia and the Pacific region. Its galleries display paintings, ceramics, sculptures, and textiles drawn from many different traditions across that part of the world.
The building was constructed in 1926 by Grace Nicholson, a dealer of Asian art, who wanted a dedicated space for her collection and her trade. After she donated it to the city of Pasadena in 1943, the space was eventually converted into a public museum that opened in 1971.
The building itself is part of the experience: its curved rooflines, painted eaves, and red columns make it look like a Chinese palace courtyard placed in the middle of Southern California. This contrast is something visitors tend to notice as soon as they step inside.
The museum sits in downtown Pasadena and is easy to reach on foot from Colorado Boulevard. A visit typically takes one to two hours, though the courtyard alone is worth a stop on the way through.
The courtyard at the center of the complex is one of the very few publicly accessible Chinese-style garden courtyards in the entire United States. The stone carvings and pool were modeled on historical Chinese sources rather than invented from scratch.
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