Asia Art Archive

Mission

Art is knowledge. Asia Art Archive is a catalyst for new ideas that enrich our understanding of the world through the collection, creation, and sharing of knowledge around recent art in Asia.

What We Do

With one of the most valuable growing collections of material on the recent history of art from Asia, freely available from our website and onsite library, AAA builds tools and communities to collectively expand knowledge through research, residency, and educational programmes.

How We Do It

We drive the composition of our collection with key areas of concern known as content priorities. These include examining sites where art history has been written in Asia through the lens of art writing, exhibitions, and pedagogy; looking at ideas that connect us beyond national borders (complex geographies); considering tradition and contemporary expression in parallel; investigating ephemeral practices such as performance art; and addressing gaps in art history and in our collection such as the imbalance of the representation of women.

Our collection comprises a vast range of documentation, including the personal archives of significant artists, educators, and art professionals as well as key exhibitions and art spaces. We continually add to it through a research, acquisition, and digitisation process. Our library houses our physical collection, which encompasses reference books, monographs, exhibition catalogues, periodicals, and rare ephemeral materials.

As part of our effort to build a community that enriches conversations around art, and be a leading resource and catalyst for scholarship in the field, we organise talks, workshops, conferences, symposia, and research grants for and with art professionals, educators, academics, artists, and the interested public.

We activate and circulate the collection in multiple ways: by offering residencies and grants for art professionals to conduct research at AAA, creating teaching resources for educators, presenting regular programming and partnering with arts initiatives to critically enquire into the collection, partnering with educational institutions to use the collection to look at how art is taught, and by commissioning and publishing articles around the collection.

These programmes and partnerships generate new ideas and connections that fuel future collections and projects.