Support What You Love

“With the world in tumult, you need a refuge,” says Jade Circle member and docent Peter Sinton.

“You can go to the great outdoors, Yosemite or Mt. Tam, or the great indoors. For me, the Asian Art Museum is the great indoors. It is my city club, my country club, my place of refuge. It’s better than meditation.” 

A natural storyteller (he spent his career as a journalist, primarily with Business Week and the San Francisco Chronicle), Peter loves showing off the museum to visitors on his docent tours. “The gods dwell in these objects,” he says. “The museum is a temple on steroids.” If you want to get closer to these objects, with behind-the-scenes tours and events with curators and scholars, Peter urges you to join Jade Circle.

He cites a Jade Circle trip to Washington D.C. and Virginia with Associate Curator for Himalayan Art Dr. Jeffrey Durham as a highlight of his membership. The group visited the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and viewed its Himalayan collection at outset of the collaboration between the museums on the exhibition Awaken: A Tibetan Buddhist Journey Toward Enlightenment.

For Peter, a fourth-generation San Franciscan, membership in Jade Circle is a way for him to express his love for his city and one of its premier art institutions. “Support what you love and it will give you pleasure in return.”

To learn more about how you can deepen your engagement with Asian art and culture and make a meaningful impact as a member of Jade Circle, contact [email protected] or 415.581.3794.