Guided discovery path
Notice what repeats
How do repeated marks turn into rhythm, pattern, or time?
6 works across collections
National Museum of Asian Art / Washington, D.C.
What stays visible when an object is painted, rejoined, or cancelled?
Two magpies call beneath an overhanging cliff on silk. A twelfth-century ceramic tile shows the line where its broken corner was rejoined. A copper plate bears the diagonal strokes that ended its printing edition. Look for the traces of making and use.
Browse 100 selected works →Have five minutes? / An Artologium looking sequence
Ink, glaze, and cancelled copper
Three works, three pauses. These questions invite close looking; they do not propose a historical connection between the objects.
Two magpies under an orchid cliffPossibly by Lü Ji (ca. 1420-ca. 1505); Formerly attributed to Zhao Chang (ca. 960-after 1015) · 15th centuryNational Museum of Asian Art · CC0 Full supplied image / A looking promptOriginal museum record ↗Two birds against a diagonal rock.
Where the dark rock overhang meets the open silk, two magpies turn toward one another while thin orchid leaves arc into the empty space below.
01 / Trace
Two magpies under an orchid cliff
Follow the dark diagonal rock from the upper edge down toward the birds. How do the long orchid blades soften that precipice?
Look closely & read the record →
Tile, large square. Broken corner rejoinedMaker unrecorded · late 12th-early 13th centuryNational Museum of Asian Art · CC0 02 / Inspect
Tile, large square. Broken corner rejoined
Find the diagonal seam mentioned in the catalogue title. How does the museum’s factual description guide what you notice in the glaze?
Look closely & read the record →
Cancelled Printing Plate for The PiazzettaJames McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) · 1879-1880National Museum of Asian Art · CC0 03 / Look through
Cancelled Printing Plate for The Piazzetta
Look through the crossing cancellation lines to the architectural scene beneath. Why keep a plate after it can no longer print an uncrossed image?
Look closely & read the record →
Cross-collection routes & claim boundaries
Where this collection meets the rest of the site.
Current Afterlives dossiers cite specific records from The Met, Cleveland, and Chicago. Works from National Museum of Asian Art participate directly in our guided discovery paths and cross-collection record comparisons without implying unverified historical transmission.
Guided discovery path
How blue behaves
What changes when blue is printed from wood, exposed by light, dyed into cotton, or brushed in oil?
5 works across collections
Guided discovery path
Botanical obsessions
What happens to a plant when it is pressed against light-sensitive paper, brushed in ink, painted in oil, or repeated on cloth?
5 works across collections
What is here / 100 selected works
A partial view.
An open door.
Selected from Smithsonian open-access records, these 100 works include East Asian, South Asian and Near Eastern art alongside James McNeill Whistler’s prints, paintings and copper plates. Attributions and uncertainties remain as recorded by the museum.
Across collections / 02
Two Cancelled Copper Plates
Two surviving Whistler copper plates, scored with cancelling lines so no further edition could be pulled—held in two Washington collections across the National Mall.
National Gallery of Art1943.3.1730
National Museum of Asian ArtF1902.132
Collection sources & reuse
Every selected image links to its museum record and CC0 dedication. The image’s source control includes its accession, original file and credit.