Providing a unique context for the Asian art collections, the Portal Project launched in 2005. The project invites renowned contemporary artists to create site-specific installations to activate an architectural experience and generate a dialogue with visitors and with the other works of art on display.

For the Arts of China Gallery, Cai Guo-Qiang proposed Odyssey. The monumental, 42-panel gunpowder drawing was created in a Houston warehouse with the help of more than 100 volunteers. The rendering of a Chinese landscape and garden magnifies the visitor experience in the gallery and resonates with the works of art on view.

Do Ho Suh was commissioned to create Portal for the Arts of Korea Gallery. He proposed a Korean gate modeled after an 18th-century-style Korean courtyard gate designed by his father, Modernist painter Suh Se Ok. Essentially transparent, Portal encases the image of a traditional Korean gate in negative space. The production was a lengthy process, and when Portal was completed, a new location was identified: the Kinder Building, which opened in 2020.