ABOUT THE MUSEUM
Located in the heart of downtown San Francisco, the International Art Museum of America (IAMA) is a permanent, non-profit museum open to the public. It is not government-subsidized.
The museum’s goal is to utilize the exhibition forum to display works of art that have achieved the most exquisite beauty and preciousness in the history of civilization. It takes as its mission bringing humanity happiness and uplifting aesthetic enjoyment. Via exhibiting world-class art, it aims to further the moral progress, spiritual well-being, and cultural development of humanity and advance world peace.
International Art Museum of America collects and exhibits outstanding works by famous artists. As an international public art museum, it is committed to assuring that the exhibited artworks meet discerning world-class standards of excellence. The Board of Directors has established their criteria for artwork selection as follows:
“Regardless of the medium—whether it be painting or calligraphy, ink-wash painting, oil painting, watercolor, gouache, or sculpture—the artwork must come from the hands of a world-class or national artist, and the value of artworks by any such living artist must be within the highest or second-highest tier of valuation. For an artist’s work to be considered by the museum, they must have artworks valued at or above US$200,000 per square foot. Otherwise, they must have had their work exhibited by the highest governmental body of their nation, be an eminent artist and the director of an art museum, or head of an art academy. Additionally, the works of artists who lived over one hundred years ago are exempt from the valuation minimum, but they must be exhibited at two or more art museums of worldwide renown, and such artists must have produced artwork of exceptional quality to be considered for exhibition at the International Art Museum of America. The museum is concerned only with the quality of the artwork itself, not with the number of artists whose works are selected for exhibition.”
European, American, and Asian artworks grace IAMA’s international collection. For example, the museum houses paintings from various countries from the 17th Century to the present day. Rosa Bonheur (France), Evariste Carpentier (Belgium), Sir Martin Archer Shee (Ireland), Karl Schultze (Germany), Archilles Theodor Cesbron (Algeria), Carlos Duran and Maurice de Vlaminck (France), George Romney (England), Frits Thaulow (Norway), Vladimir Semanski (Russia), and Charles Dorman Robinson (U.S.A).
The museum exhibits representative works from each artistic subject category and period of H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III. H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III is a renowned world-class art master. He was the first one to be conferred on him the Fellowship by the Royal Academy of Arts in its over 200 years of history. The selling prices of His paintings are among the highest of living artists. The auction price for His paintings was US$910,000 per square foot in 2010, and it reached $1.65 million per square foot in 2015. IAMA has 16 creative styles of paintings by H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III that are unique, exquisite, and unprecedented.
Additionally, the museum displays artworks by Professor Yuhua Shouzhi Wang. A U.S. Congressional Record praises her lotus paintings as “unsurpassed” in “the history of Chinese art” and her painted sculptures of cobblestones and sculptures of coral formations as “treasures of the world.” These sculptures of corals and pebbles are created from wood and then painted to convey the essence of natural corals and stones while surpassing their beauty, the likes of which are genuinely found nowhere else. A dedicated exhibit room at IAMA shows many of Professor Wang’s Chinese ink-wash paintings, some of which were displayed at the Louvre in Paris in 2019. UNESCO awarded Professor Wang “International First-class Artist” in 2020.
The museum possesses works by some of the most accomplished Chinese artists since 1600 AD. They include works by Wu Changshuo, a renowned painter, calligrapher, and seal carver hailed as one of the “Four Great Painters of the Shanghai School in the Late Qing Dynasty”; calligraphy by Emperor Yongzheng of the Qing Dynasty; artwork by Ren Bonian, a famous painter of the late Qing Dynasty; painting by Yun Shouping, a great master of his era and foremost among the six great artists of the late Ming and early Qing dynasties; artwork by Huang Binhong, a modern Chinese art master who has been hailed as the “greatest master of brush and ink in history”; artwork of Zhang Daqian; and artwork by Qi Baishi, a celebrated and exceptional contemporary master of Chinese painting, calligraphy, and seal carving. IAMA is unique in that it is a museum that has one of the largest collections of Chinese paintings in the United States.
Also on display are exquisite artistic frames sculpted and finished by oil painting or formed in the style of jade or wood, and Yun Sculptures that depict an irreproducible form of art seen for the first time in thousands of years whose ethereal beauty captivates the soul. One of them is a piece proclaimed as the “peerless treasure of the world” and whose value is priceless, for it is the first artwork in human history where the sculpture of a Stone enfolds mist that never dissipates.
There are also a pair of bronze lions of the Ming Dynasty (1426 AD) and a pair of bronze unicorns that guard the antique doorways of the museum.
Some of the museum’s exhibits are extraordinary artistic masterpieces, the likes of which do not exist in any other museum in the world. We will continue to work hard in collecting beautiful, top-quality artwork of a wide variety to provide humanity with spiritual sustenance and contribute to the service of humanity through art.
Finally, the International Art Museum of America thanks H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III for loaning many of His precious artworks. Although the museum exhibits H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III’s artworks, H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III does not own any museum’s share, asset, or ownership right. He is not a director of the museum, nor does He participate in the management and operations of the museum.
