Museum of Asian Art of Corfu
Greek state collection of Asian art in the neoclassical palace of St Michael and St George.
The museum occupies the Palace of St Michael and St George on the northern side of the Spianada in Corfu Town. Built between 1819 and 1824 as the residence of the British Lord High Commissioner of the United States of the Ionian Islands and as the seat of the Order of St Michael and St George, it was designed by Colonel George Whitmore of the Royal Engineers and faced in Maltese limestone. A Doric colonnade links two gateways named after the order's patron saints; after the union with Greece in 1864 the building served as a royal residence.
The museum was founded in 1928 to house some 10,500 works of Chinese and Japanese art presented to the Greek state by the diplomat Gregorios Manos, and was known at first as the Museum of Sino-Japanese Art. Later bequests widened its scope and it took its present name in 1974. The collections now exceed 15,000 items from China, Japan, India, Korea, Tibet and Gandhara, among them ceramics, bronzes, Noh masks, samurai armour and ukiyo-e prints. It remains the only Greek museum devoted entirely to Asian art.
Highlights
- The only museum in Greece devoted wholly to the arts of Asia
- Gregorios Manos's Sino-Japanese collection, the founding donation of 1928
- Regency palace of 1819-1824 by Colonel George Whitmore, faced in Maltese limestone
- Japanese rooms with Noh masks, samurai armour and ukiyo-e woodblock prints
