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Asia Society

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Asia Society

The Asia Society is a 501(c)(3) organization that focuses on educating the world about Asia. It has several centers in the United States (Manhattan, Washington, D.C., Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle) and around the world (Hong Kong, Manila, Seoul, Melbourne, Sydney, Tokyo, Mumbai, Delhi, Paris and Zurich). The Society's headquarters are in New York City, and includes a museum that exhibits pre-modern, modern, and contemporary art from Asia, Oceania and the Asian diaspora. Asia Society also publishes an online magazine, ChinaFile.

In January 2024, Kyung-wha Kang, who served as the first female Minister of Foreign Affairs of South Korea, from 2017 to 2021, was named its president and CEO, effective in April 2024. Asia Society has been described as a participant in the Chinese Communist Party's "backchannel" diplomatic efforts.

The Asia Society was founded in 1956 by John D. Rockefeller 3rd. In 1974, Rockefeller donated 300 objects of Asian art (worth between $10 and $15 million) to the Asia Society.

The Asia Society's original focus was explaining aspects about Asia to Americans, and Robin Pogrebin of The New York Times said that it was "[l]ong regarded as a New York institution with regional branches". Around 2011, the society was refocusing efforts on augmenting partnerships amongst Asians and between Asians and Americans in business, culture, education, and public policy. In 2011, Pogrebin said "over the last few years [it] has aimed to recast itself as an international organization, partly through the construction of the two major centers in Houston and Hong Kong where it previously had only offices". The organization's records are held at the Rockefeller Archive Center in North Tarrytown, NY.

The Society's Manhattan headquarters, at Park Avenue and East 70th Street on the Upper East Side, is a nine-story building faced in smooth red Oklahoma granite designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes / John M.Y. Lee Architects in 1980. Since it replaced some old brownstones on one of the city's most prestigious streets, Barnes gave the building a strong facade to continue the line along Park, and set it back from East 70th with a terraced garden buffering it between the street and the older houses on that block. The semicircular window on the upper story and variations in the color and finish of the granite are intended to evoke Asian cultures. Paul Goldberger, architecture critic at The New York Times, called it "an ambitious building, full of civilized intentions, some of which succeed and others that do not". In the former category he put the interiors and the overall shape; in the latter he included the facade.

In 1999, it was closed for 18 months so that new interiors, designed by Bartholomew Voorsanger, could be built. During that time the society used the former Christie's Manhattan offices on 59th Street as a temporary home. The completed renovation included a 24-foot-high (7.3 m) atrium and cafe. The expansion doubled the museum's exhibition space, allowing the society space for special exhibitions in addition to displaying the Rockefeller Asian art collection on display.

Robin Pogrebin of The New York Times said in 2011 that the Asia Society is "perhaps best known for the elegance of its headquarters and galleries on Park Avenue at 70th Street".

2012 marked a major expansion, with the opening of multimillion-dollar buildings in Hong Kong and Houston, Texas. The Hong Kong complex, dedicated on February 9, 2012, is situated on the site of a former British military explosives magazine overlooking Victoria Harbour and includes numerous restored military buildings. The project was designed by architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien. The Asia Society Hong Kong Center was established in 1990.

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