Asian Art Museum in San Francisco

During the first week of September, I made a trip with a friend to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Every first Sunday of the month, admission into the museum is free. It is my first time to visit there and I was most impressed with the huge number of Buddhas on display. Most of the pieces are in excellent condition. It is amazing 600-year-old pottery and all these stone statues of Buddha that looks like it was made yesterday. What really brings this place to life for me are the brilliant combination of social mixers and live performance events mixed with cultural education. Asian Art Museum in San Francisco has a collection of about 17,000 objects of art and artifacts from all major Asian countries. In this museum, there are unique collection of Asian art and the famous bronze statue of Buddha from China. Chinese Buddha statue is the world's oldest known recorded from 338 AD. In this museum there are several main galleries devoted to the art of South Asia, West Asia (including Persia), Southeast Asia, Himalaya, China, Korea and Japan. I was quite impressed with the collection of Buddhist items, with entire sections dedicated to Buddhism from different time periods and regions. Of all the historical artifacts, I would say what became most apparent and valuable as a take-away lesson was the diversity of Buddha imagery in Buddhism, again depending on time periods and regions. As I walked from one room to the next, I sometimes found myself not sure if I was even still browsing the Buddhist exhibit in seeing images I would initially associate with Hinduism or other Eastern religions. Specifically, the statue of the Buddha surprised me. My first impression is that it looks quite like a certain other religious leader popular and dominant in Western culture. The description of the statue points out certain