Artful bliss in the garden of blankness

In 1971 Maxwell Hearn entered a museum by the back door. What he found inside so fascinated him that he has never quite left the world

The word metaphor constantly surfaces during a conversation with Maxwell Hearn, chairman of Asian art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

"Imagine yourself walking down the pathway of our scholar's garden, with the ever-changing view evocative of the intimate experience of unrolling a long hand scroll," he says. "The scenery - mountains, rivers, thickets - is revealed not all at once, but bit by bit."