The Cleveland Museum of Art's long history of collecting and presenting great works of art from Asia and its close relationship with colleagues at Japan's museums gave rise to the extraordinary exhibition Buddhist Treasures from Nara. An interest in the arts of Asia was incorporated into the museum's earliest statements of purpose. A unique balance of Eastern and Western works of art became one of the hallmarks of the museum's permanent holdings. The Asian collection is unquestionably the most distinguished collection formed since the early 20th century.

Cleveland-Nara connections date back to Langdon Warner, the museum's special consultant in Asian art from about 1915 to about 1930, the only foreigner honored in burial at the Horyu-ji, one of Nara's great temple complexes and the oldest surviving Buddhist temple in the world. Warner's book on early Buddhist sculpture in Japan focused largely on Nara temple collections and was published by CMA. A painted mandala in CMA's collection featuring Nara's pre-eminent Shinto shrine, the Kasuga Jinja, was purchased for the museum by Warner in 1916, the year CMA opened to the public. This painting was lent to the Nara National Museum's 100th anniversary exhibition last year, along with an extremely rare 12th-century lacquer tabernacle whose mate is in the Nara National Museum collection.

In the post-World War II era, former CMA curator Howard Coonley Hollis (1899-1995) served in Japan as chief of the Arts and Monuments Division at Gen. Douglas MacArthur's general headquarters. Sherman E. Lee was mentored by Hollis and succeeded him in that post. Lee later joined CMA's curatorial staff and served as CMA director from 1958 until his retirement in 1983. Lee's close professional relationship with former Nara National Museum director Kurata Bunsaku was an important part of the friendship between the two museums over the years.

CMA's relationships with Japanese institutions have also included a residency in Nara by Michael R. Cunningham, CMA curator of Japanese and Korean art, during his preparation for CMA's 75th anniversary exhibition The Triumph of Japanese Style: 16th-Century Art in Japan (1991-92), which featured rare loans from Japanese collections. Triumph was organized in collaboration with Japan's Bunka-cho (Agency for Cultural Affairs), whose painting specialist at the time was Miyajimi Shinichi, now chief curator at the Nara National Museum. CMA is the only museum whose exhibitions, such as Triumph and the earlier Reflections of Reality in Japanese Art (1983), have been allowed by Japanese lenders to unite its own works with National Treasures and Important Cultural Properties from Japan, many never previously lent outside Japan. Following Triumph, CMA sponsored a Nara museum curator's research trip to CMA and other U.S. museums.

The CMA is one of only three art museums in the West selected to participate in a Japanese-government-sponsored exhibition exchange program of the Bunka-cho and the Japanese national museums. (Previous exchanges were between the Tokyo National Museum and the National Museum of Belgium in Brussels in 1994 and between the Kyoto National Museum and the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco in 1996.) The Nara National Museum, which is the principal repository of religious arts in Japan, chose CMA as its partner. Buddhist Treasures from Nara, drawn from that museum and including art objects owned by temples and shrines throughout the country, is by far the most significant loan of Japanese Buddhist art ever viewed outside Japan.

The Nara National Museum specifically requested Asian paintings from Cleveland's collection for the exhibition now in Japan, Highlights of Asian Painting from the Cleveland Museum of Art, one hundred paintings from the 11th-19th centuries from China, Japan, India, and Korea. This exhibition, which opened in Nara and is on view at the Suntory Art Museum in Tokyo through June 21, marks the first time a major exhibition entirely from CMA's collection has traveled abroad.

In addition to the exhibition exchange, CMA is currently the beneficiary of a conservation project with the Tokyo National Research Institute of Cultural Properties, in which the lacquer tabernacle and three Japanese paintings have undergone or will begin restoration in Japanese conservation studios.