Its geographic reach covers regions in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, the Autonomous Region of Tibet and Xinjiang of the People's Republic of China, the Southeast Asian countries of Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and also the Indonesian Islands or archipelago.

[5] The permanent exhibition contains stone, bronze, stucco and ceramic sculptures and stone reliefs with Hindu, Buddhist and Jain subjects as well as murals, clay sculptures and textiles from Buddhist complexes on the northern Silk Road (now Xinjiang, PR China), and Indian miniatures and craftwork from the Islamic Mughal period.

Sculptures of stone, bronze and wood, as well as ritual objects from Nepal, Tibet, Burma, and southeast Asia complete coverage of the Indo-Asian region.

[8] The museum, with an outstanding collection of some 20,000 artifacts, has example of stone sculptures, reliefs, bronze and terracotta works representative of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.

Much of its collection of Jain art and Hindu sculpture dates to the classic period or the Middle Ages, and the museum also contains reconstruction of Indian temples.

The Chinese Department has a large exhibition of porcelain, considerably enriched by Georg Weishaupt's collection, as well as lacquerware.

As many works of Chinese and Japanese writing and some of the old paintings are particularly sensitive to light, they are exhibited for periods of three months before being replaced.

However, as a result of ties with Japanese woodcuts and the museum's important graphic collection, new relationships and priorities constantly emerge.

The courtyard, which can be reached from the basement, presents a stone copy of the east gate of the famous Stupa I from Sanchi in central India.

A tradition of close cooperation exists with the German Society for East Asian Art, one of the museum's two supporting associations.

For example, museum director Willibald Veit is also Professor of East Asian Art History at the university.

[10] The merger of the two museums has been done with a future expansion plans of the "Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz" and to establish the Humboldt-Forum on Schlossplatz in Berlin-Mitte, a new concept venue for unique European collections.