Östasiatiska museet - The Museum

The museum has collections from Asia, with special focus on China. Items from the collections now on display in China before China illustrate prehistoric China, The Middle Kingdom deals with China in the age of emperors and also on display China´s Book History, Buddhist and Indian sculptures and Chinese paintings.
The museum is preparing to open two new permanent exhibitions, one on Japan, followed by one on Korea in 2011.

The History of the Museum

The Swedish archaeologist Johan "Kina-Gunnar" Andersson found painted ceramics from Chinas agricultural Stone Age in China in the 1920s. These collections formed the basis for the museum, which was instituted by the Swedish Parliament in 1926. The museum grew rapidly and eventually held a wealth of informative material about Asian cultures. These collections were merged in 1959 with the National Museum of Fine Arts collections of Far Eastern and Indian arts and crafts. The new museum opened in1963 in Tyghuset, an old naval building on Skeppsholmen. The long yellow building, which dates from the late 1600s, was designed by Nicodemus Tessin the Younger. It has been a ropewalk, a poorhouse and a stable, as well as a lions den, and now: Meeting place Asia!

Since 1999 the museum has been part of the National Museums of World Culture together with the Museum of Ethnography and the Museum of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities in Stockholm and the Museum of World Culture in Gothenburg. The four museums present and bring to life the worlds cultures and offer a perspective on our world.