Picture three museums united here at the Harvard Art Museums, part of Harvard University. Here three distinct museums—the Fogg Museum, established in 1895; the Busch-Reisinger Museum, established in 1903; and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, established in 1985—come together with four research centers: the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis (founded in 1958), the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies (founded in 1928), the Center for the Technical Study of Modern Art (founded in 2002), and the Harvard Art Museums Archives. In 1983 these three museums were integrated into a single institution under the name Harvard University Art Museums; the word "University" was dropped from the institutional name in 2008.
The collections here amount to approximately 250,000 objects in all media, ranging in date from antiquity to the present and originating in Europe, North America, North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. The main building contains 204,000 square feet (19,000 m2) of space for public exhibitions, classrooms, conservation and research labs, and other related functions; approximately 43,000 square feet (4,000 m2) are dedicated to exhibitions. Picture roughly 250,000 objects spanning antiquity to the present, filling the galleries and labs behind these walls.