She traveled throughout China, Japan, Korea, and Russia purchasing works of art and artifacts, taking photographs, and writing extensive field notes.
Her son, Sam, would eventually legally adopt Warner's last name and spend much time traveling with his parents.
The Warners continued to live in Shanghai intermittently, spending more and more time in the U.S. at their new home, the Fairmont San Francisco, CA, but also traveling to parts of Japan.
The lantern-slide collection also includes hundreds of Japanese sacred sites, cityscapes, and daily life activities, and the Warners captured numerous photographs of Meiji and Shōwa period.
She maintained a diary from 1913 to the 1920, with field notes giving valuable descriptions of Shinto shrines (jinja), particular rituals, and site histories.
She took five collecting trips to Asia from the 1920s to 1940s, at times accompanied by her friend UO art historian and collector Maude Kerns or others, .
She met with other collectors, such as Frederick Starr, and regional specialists, including Asian professors of art and religious history.
Following Murray's death, she moved to Eugene, Oregon, to live near her son Sam, and began finding a permanent home for her collection.
With funding and support from Irene Hazard Gerlinger, the university's first woman regent, a permanent professional museum was built to house the collection.
Called "one of Lawrence's finest buildings [for its] exotic blend of Modernistic, oriental and European styles", the University of Oregon Museum of Art realized Warner's transnational learning philosophy.
Warner and Lawrence envisioned it as a physical representation of "the meeting of eastern and western civilizations on the Pacific Coast."
Before World War II, she stopped visiting and collecting art in Asia, and in 1944, moved to live near Sam, once again, in Peterborough, NH.
Warner was awarded an honorary degree of Master of Arts in public service from the University of Oregon in 1929, "in recognition of her scholarly contribution to a better understanding of the art and civilization of Oriental peoples through her discriminating selection and organization of material contained in the Murray Warner Collection, and her tireless efforts in the promotion of international goodwill.
In 1958, in a dedication ceremony for the Gertrude Bass Memorial Reference Library for the UO Museum of Art, her friend Maude Kerns explained how she hoped the University of Oregon would continue Warner's mission "to build a bridge of love and understanding between East and West, so desperately needed in solving today's problems.