The Boone Collection at the Field Museum of Chicago consists of over 3,500 East Asian artifacts gathered by Navy Commander Gilbert E. Boone and his wife Katharine Phelps Boone, who acquired the items during a three year tour of duty in Japan during the 1950s.  The Boones donated the collection to the Field Museum with the understanding that their collection should be used as an educational tool, to foster an interest in and understanding of East Asia.

The collection covers a broad range of objects of a variety of artistic media. It contains books, paintings, ceramics, furniture, lacquerware, textiles, and much more. Of particular interest are the many Japanese scroll paintings and books. However, for the Boones, these objects were not only meant to be looked at through glass cases, but handled and experienced close up, so that one could truly appreciate how and why they were created, and the context from which they emerged.

In the fall semester 2006 and spring semester 2009 students of the department of East Asian art history at the University took part at a research project organized by the University of Zurich and the Field Museum in Chicago. Its goals were to create a catalogue of the selected Chinese, Japanese and Korean paintings at the Museum and assess the necessity of conservatory measures. In summer 2009 participants of the course could visit storage areas of the Field Museum in Chicago in order to view the objects in the original and to reconfirm and supplement the results of their survey.