The masterpieces in this exhibition encompass nearly a millennium of art from across the Himalayan region (centered on Tibet and Nepal) and from neighboring areas under its cultural influence.

In 1772, a group of Philadelphia master cabinetmakers published Prices of Cabinet and Chair Work, a 36-page book listing furniture forms and their decorative variations, retail prices for furniture in mahogany and walnut, and the wages to be paid to the journeymen who made the furniture. This exhibition features furniture that is delineated in the book of prices, including three large case pieces with the three types of tops, or "heads", from least expensive to most expensive: flat, pitch pediment, and scroll pediment.

The Museum welcomes two masterpieces made for Philadelphia by two of nineteenth-century America’s finest artists, Thomas Eakins and Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Close contemporaries and friends, they both trained in Paris and traveled in Europe before returning to the United States about 1870 to begin distinguished careers. Sharing a belief in the expressive power of the human body as a subject for modern painting and sculpture, they developed different styles.

What makes a king or noble honorable? How does a hero act? The seven illustrations in this exhibition come from manuscripts created in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries under the Safavid rulers of Iran (Persia) and the Mughals of India. Each demonstrates a feat of heroism or an act of justice befitting a good Islamic ruler.