The Walters Art Museum is among America's most distinctive museums, forging connections between people and art from cultures around the world and spanning seven millennia. The museum features a stunning array of objects, from richly illuminated Qur'ans and images of the Buddha, to captivating narrative paintings and artfully crafted ceramics and metalworks. Official publication in March 2023 celebrates the reopening of the Museum's Arts of Asia and Islam collections in the renovated and reinstalled 4th floor of the Centre Street Building. Arts Across Asia and Islam will be the first volume in a series of titles which break away from the traditional academic approach. It is built around themes that transcend period, form, locale and medium, and forms part of the Museum's wider initiative to focus resources on developing new ways of interpreting its collections.

Hell has been embodied and portrayed in terrifying, bizarre, and occasionally humorous incarnations across religions and cultures for millennia. Whether considered as places of eternal or finite punishment, underworlds provide a rich setting for a potent cast of characters that have caught the imaginations of artists and patrons who have shaped the visual cultures of Asia’s systems of belief, particularly Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Islam. Through masterpieces from West Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia, and the diaspora, paired with essays from renowned scholars, this publication explores both differences and similarities in conceptions of the afterlife and artistic practices from religion to religion and culture to culture. This journey through judgment, punishment, and even the pro-mise of salvation sheds light on the fundamental questions of life, death, and existence.

Buddha and Shiva, Lotus and Dragon presents sixty-seven masterpieces collected by John D. Rockefeller the third and his wife Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller. Illuminating the cultures and history of Asia, the book presents a magnificent selection of sculptures, bronzes, and ceramics that range from the late sixth century BCE to the early nineteenth century CE. Highlights of the collection including spectacular Chinese vases, dynamic Indian Chola bronzes, and exquisite Southeast Asian sculptures. The Rockefellers collected art from across the continent, with works originating from Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tibet, and Vietnam. A selection of Japanese works reflects the Rockefellers' working relationship with their art advisor Sherman E. Lee, a well-respected museum director and scholar of Asian art. As a collector and philanthropist, Rockefeller played an instrumental role in fostering cultural understanding and cooperation between Asia and America after the Second World War. The collection, which was bequeathed to the Asia Society in New York City following Rockefeller's death in 1978, represents the culmination of his life-long interest in art and international politics. The Rockefellers aimed to educate Americans about the importance and diversity of Asian art as a means to encourage cross-cultural dialogue, elevate understanding of Asian cultures, and create bridges to future economic and sociopolitical dialogue and engagement.