Asian Art Museum

This guide to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco opens with a bronze bust that stood in the entryway for fifty years before staff quietly removed it in July 2020: the face of Avery Brundage, the Chicago millionaire whose nearly eight thousand pieces founded this collection in 1959. It follows his darker record as president of the International Olympic Committee, from pushing to hold the 1936 Games in Nazi Germany to his conduct at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. You'll also hear about two carved stone temple lintels from his collection that turned out to have been stolen from Khmer sanctuaries, and what federal investigators spent three years tracing.