Guimet Museum of Asian Art, France

Founded by Lyon industrialist Émile Guimet (1836-1918), who set out to build a museum of Egyptian, classical and Asian religions after a world tour in 1876 through Japan, China and India. His first museum opened in Lyon in 1879; the collection later moved to a purpose-built Paris museum, inaugurated in 1889.

Over the following decades the museum's focus shifted increasingly toward Asian civilizations: Khmer art from Louis Delaporte's expeditions, Korean objects from Charles Varat, Tibetan art assembled by Jacques Bacot (1912), and major Central Asian and Chinese collections from the Paul Pelliot and Édouard Chavannes expeditions after the museum came under French state administration in 1927. Afghan material arrived through the 1920s-30s French Archaeological Delegation to Afghanistan, overseen by then-director Joseph Hackin.

In 1945, amid a reorganization of French national collections, the Guimet transferred its Egyptian holdings to the Louvre in exchange for the Louvre's entire Asian Arts department. Successive directors — René Grousset, Philippe Stern, Jeannine Auboyer, Vadime Elisseeff, and Jean-François Jarrige — expanded its research, library, photographic archive, and gallery layout over the 20th century. A 1991 annexe opened the Buddhist Pantheon, showing Emile Guimet's own Japan collection.

A major renovation (adopted 1993, completed in the 2000s) by architects Henri and Bruno Gaudin emphasized natural light and open sightlines across 5,500 m² of permanent galleries, completing the museum's full internal reorganization since its founding over a century earlier.