The Seattle Art Museum is home to a premier collection of Chinese art in North America, which was formed largely in the twentieth century during the directorship of museum founder Dr. Richard E. Fuller (director 1933-73). Although Seattle’s Chinese collection is best known for its jades, ceramics, and later Buddhist sculpture, during the directorship of Mimi Gardner Gates (director 1994–2009) and shaped by successive curators Jay Xu, Hsueh-man Shen and Josh Yiu, the collection of Chinese painting and calligraphy grew substantially, adding important works of the Ming and Qing dynasties as well as the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.