Inside the Brooklyn Museum’s 10-year gut-renovation of its Asian and Islamic art galleries

An emphasis on authenticity, transparency and timelessness dictated many of the museum's decisions, they say.

The Brooklyn Museum has finally completed their decade-long overhaul of eight historic galleries centered around Eastern art. Altogether, the thematic rooms encompass China, Japan, Korea, and more than 20,000 square feet and 700 artifacts. Their work concluded last week with the unveiling of the Arts of South Asia and the Arts of the Islamic World.

“It’s been a pleasure to bring the entirety of the floor back on view, which hasn’t been displayed in its full glory since 2012,” Anne Pasternak, the Museum’s director, said in a press release. The project’s technical specs include “bespoke casework” and “state-of-the-art lighting.” But it all started with HVAC concerns.

On a Zoom with Brooklyn Magazine, the Museum’s Asian art curator Joan Cummins said that prior to 2012, they didn’t even have air conditioning.

Once the spaces started to get gutted, the deep dive surfaced other ideas. “It was a wonderful opportunity to rethink galleries that, in many cases, have not been touched since the 1970s,” Cummins said. “It was also a really nice opportunity for us to get our hands on a bunch of objects that had been sitting in cases for decades and finally do proper conservation on them.”

In some instances that meant cleaning and restoring — with contemporary sensibilities. Once upon a time museum staff took liberties, transforming cracked relics into pristine specimens with a bit of smoke, mirrors, and elbow grease. “Now there are gaps present,” Cummins said. “The object maybe doesn’t look as gorgeous, but it’s a more authentic object.”

Broken Buddha: Head and Torso of a Buddha. Thailand, Sukhothai period, last half of 14th–first half of 15th century. Bronze (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

Others required scientific testing. One ceremonial garment in the Himalayan galleries is made from bone, per Tibetan Buddhist tradition. “If it’s the real thing, it’s human bones,” Cummins said. “People who were particularly righteous would donate their bodies for these ritual aprons.”

The Museum seized the opportunity presented by this renovation to make sure they have an authentic specimen. Sure enough, it came back homo sapien.

Most of the facts they checked though were, well, facts. Ayşin Yoltar-Yıldırım, the Museum’s curator of Islamic art, added that they were able to determine previously unknown dates and artists for other works. What’s more, while trading spaces, Yoltar focused specifically on presenting items in the contexts of everyday life — if a tile artwork would’ve been displayed up high, that’s where you’ll find it. She’s put prayer mats on the floor, where any historical owner would use them.

Don’t expect a whole lot of high tech special effects, though. At the end of their 10-year staggered release, it’s hard to tell the order in which galleries were finished since they aimed for a timeless aesthetic, eschewing too many design elements or digital interactives. The works throughout will rotate periodically.

Provenance alone could offer clues for enterprising sleuths who want to check out what’s new. Two summers ago, as social justice movements reshaped every industry, the Brooklyn Museum made it institution-wide policy to list publicly the path of ownership every article on display has tread. They’re still working on a backlog of items in the Korean, Chinese, and Japanese galleries. (For the curious, no surprise discoveries were reported.)

However, Cummins clarified “Our primary focus is on what the objects meant to their original users, rather than what they’ve meant to a bunch of New Yorkers in the 20th century.” Maybe these eight encyclopedic galleries don’t offer the same sex appeal as other shifting exhibitions (like the Virgil Abloh retrospective on view through January 2023), but they can offer actionable knowledge for attendees who get whisked away from the spectacle.

“We want anyone who wanders in by accident, to come away saying, ‘I always wondered why the Buddha looked that way,’” Cummins said. “Or ‘I heard there weren’t any figures in Islamic art and now I know that’s not true.’” At the end of it all, that’s what a museum is for. To share a wider knowledge and appreciation for diverse cultures.

“What started off as a not so glamorous construction project, turned into a really fun, intellectual and aesthetic project,” Cummins concluded.

Check out these galleries once, and then over and over, while they’re on view like this for at least the next 15 years.