Asian Art Museum

Museum

Asian Art Museum (museum, run by the Asian Art Museum): $11.8M budgeted for its department in FY2025, 75 employees on the payroll, 3 city documents at the Internet Archive, every figure linked to its source. The Asian Art Museum's civic record is the record of a building changing hands. In February 1990 the Asian Art Commission's executive committee endorsed a proposed Board of Supervisors resolution implementing the jurisdictional transfer of the Main Public Library building to the museum — the library was about to move across Civic Center. The environmental paperwork followed the transfer: a 1996 addendum extended the Main Library's environmental impact report, certified in 1992, to cover the museum project, and a full supplemental report was published for public comment in July 1998 with a hearing that August. The conversion permit, filed in May 1999, states the change without ceremony — "rehabilitation of old main library to new asian art museum" — at a declared construction value of $55 million. Work on the parcel has continued since: a $6.3 million renovation completed in 2018 added roughly 12,000 square feet of gallery space, and a $900,000 permit in 2022 replaced the pedestal paver system, stairs, ramps and handrails and repaired the waterproofing beneath. Source: SF Controller open data and the Internet Archive.