Asian Art Museum Installs Bronze Sculptures

—By Bay City News Service

The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco—Chong-Moon Lee Center for Asian Art and Culture has installed two 800-pound Japanese bronze lion sculptures on granite plinths outside the Larkin Street entrance.

The sculptures were recently acquired by the museum through a donation from supporter Marsha Vargas Handley, in memory of Raymond G. Handley, museum officials said.

Dating to the 19th century, they are similar to the guardian lions often placed outside Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines.

Both the lions' size—nearly five feet tall and six feet long—and material are unusual, officials said.

Few bronze guardian lions survive from before World War II.

The Asian Art Museum is one of the Bay Area's premier art institutions and home to a world-renown collection of more than 18,000 Asian art treasures spanning 6,000 years of history, according to its website.

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