The shelves of Jim Robinson's office are lined with books and catalogues, his desk piled high with papers, and notes and page scraps are everywhere.

But the cramped space still seems officious, the organization almost canonical. All of which is no cause for surprise, given the 62-year-old's four decades working as a curator and art historian.

What might surprise you, though -- at least until you understand Robinson's role at the Indianapolis Museum of Art -- is that the books and pages insulating his lair are filled with Chinese characters rather than English letters.

Robinson, who grew up in New York and originally pursued astronomy as his study path of choice, has been with the IMA since 1979 and is currently the museum's Jane Weldon Myers Curator of Asian Art.

Beginning his scholarly career at Case-Western Reserve University in Cleveland, where he majored in art history, Robinson followed that with a masters degree at the University of Michigan, in Chinese art history. He also obtained his Ph.D. there, with a dissertation entitled "The Vitality of Style: Aspects of Flower and Bird Painting During the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368)." He worked as a research assistant at the Cleveland Museum of Art and as a docent at the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. before joining the IMA.

Robinson recently talked about his area of expertise, and seemed almost gleeful, straightening his tie (which looks like it were cut from Asia's finest silks), sipping from his coffee mug (which is made from -- what else? -- blue and white China), delighting in every fact and figure imparted.

It was as if Robinson were sharing another world entirely. More so than most art experts, he was doing exactly that.

When did you first develop a love of Asian art and culture?

I have always loved art, any kind. But I went to Cleveland to major in astrophysics, astronomy, because I also liked astronomy. I was packing my electives with art history courses, while maintaining a science major. And Cleveland has a great Asian art collection. The man who wrote the book "A History of Far Eastern Art" was the director at the Cleveland Museum -- Sherman Lee -- who just passed away. I was fortunate to have him for some classes, and then they had a groundbreaking show, "The Arts of the Yuan Dynasty," similar to (the new exhibition at the IMA, "Power & Glory"). It had sculpture, textile, ceramics, paintings. I loved it, and from that I wanted to continue in Chinese art. So halfway through my senior year I decided to switch, and my astronomy professor was nice. He said, if you're a chemical engineer, you usually switch into electrical engineering or mechanical engineering. But when you're in astronomy, you usually go into old English poetry or some sort of wacko thing. And I just realize that although I was impressed by the wonders of nature that were obvious in astronomy, that the creativity of the human spirit was a little more appealing.

Where did you grow up?

New York, just north of New York City. Pleasantville, home of the Reader's Digest. East of the Tappan Zee Bridge, east of Tarrytown, by White Plains. My parents would drag me into New York to see the Met and see all sorts of art, so I was exposed to it even at a young age. Then I went to Cleveland for college, then up to Ann Arbor, Mich., for graduate school, slowly creeping westward. I settled down here, had a couple of kids. It's a great place to raise a family, and it's a great collection. It's been a pleasure.

You must have been to China many times?

I can't say many, many times, but I've been there a lot. The first time I went, while trying to come to grips with the language, I went to Taiwan, because at that time (1970-71) the U.S. didn't recognize mainland China. I went for a year to see if I could come to grips with the language, because you can't study French art history without knowing French, and to see if I would really like the culture while I lived in it. I had a great time, enjoyed it, learned more. Other folks who were in the same program with me got totally burnt out, couldn't take it, and had to have career changes. So that was my extended stay. Since then it's been various trips back, usually a couple of weeks at a time, but the longest since has been a month.

What was your first trip to the Chinese mainland like?

It was extraordinary. I was on the plane going over (in 1981), and it was like a pilgrimage to Mecca, finally being able to see the palace and the museum. I was flying over with some firefighters, who were going to put out an oil rig fire, and they could care less about the culture -- they were worrying about the women and the bars. At that time, China was nothing like it is now. They had two colors, blue or green, no other color on the street. A couple of trucks. Hardly any private vehicles. Thousands of bicycles. Beijing had just put in its first traffic light two years earlier, but they hadn't connected it to electricity yet, so it just hung there.

There seems to be a massive contemporary art boom in China. Is that that outside your realm of interest?

I don't get into it that much. Maybe I should. One of the great translators of Chinese literature was an English man, who never went to China, and somebody asked him why. He said, "The China I love ended 800 years ago." Well, the China I love ended probably about 400 years ago. And it's too complex. It's hard enough having to keep up with 4,000 years of bronzes, ceramics, paintings and jades, and then you get the whole contemporary scene. And in order to properly understand some of that, you've got to know contemporary art of the rest of the planet because it's on an international level. But some of the contemporary art is a continuation of what has gone before in China.

Is there a shared sensibility you can see?

There are several currents, with obviously thousands of artists, and there are some who are going the traditional ways. But many others are going right after what Mark Rothko has done, or Andy Warhol. So to know how they're elaborating or changing or improving on what others have done, you have to know what those others are, and I just can't study all that. I draw the line.

Although you specialize in Chinese art, does your expertise include other Asian nations?

A little bit. I mean, here, in the west, Asia is everything east of Greece and west of Hawaii. I've been a one-man band here for a while, and know my limitations. I now have a colleague (Dr. John Teramoto) who deals with Japanese and Korean arts. But in school, it's a luxury to be able to study just one Asian art. You have to study others. To study Italian painting, you have to know a little about German and Flemish painting.

Have you seen much impact on Asian art from the western hemisphere?

Many times. The Silk Road brought a lot of western influence, in design and music, around 700 A.D. Everybody likes things that are slightly exotic. It may be short-lived, like the Beatle invasion brought over a lot of Carnaby Street dress and fashion and attitudes, but it goes on to something else. By the end of the Ming dynasty, there were monks, Jesuit priests who went to China with European engravings and drawings, and some of the Chinese artists would see that, and artists really pick up on things visually, and see the great difference.

How should westerners approach Asian art?

They should sort of get into an attitude of being a person of this planet rather than a person of this country. For me, I always think one of the finest things about Chinese art is its sense of line. The art of writing, of calligraphy, is one of the highest art forms. I think this is why people like Chinese vases for lamps, because of the silhouette. To me it's the line of the object. The proportions, I find, are absolutely universal.

You've been with the IMA since 1979, and seen an array of great acquisitions come into the Asian collection. Did you imagine then that the collection would be so strong now?

Even in '79, it was a great Chinese collection, and that was one of the arguing points I made for the acquisition of Japanese art -- that we were just too one-sided, and it would be great to acquire something that compliments the Chinese collection. The Chinese collection has been growing slowly since then, more by gifts and purchases, because prices are just going through the roof and it's very hard for institutions now to be able to spend that kind of money.

Are you aware of a bigger audience for Asian art here than elsewhere?

I don't really know. Eli Lilly is one of the reasons why we have a great collection. Before the war they had set up an office in Shanghai, and were doing dealings in Shanghai. Far more recently, Japanese companies have come here. I think we're third in the nation in terms of Japanese companies being here, but that's more because of economics, and has only been in the last 20 years. I think there's just a universal appeal. People like Chinese food. I'm often asked, why Asian art in Indiana? I can understand Boston, which had trade with it, or San Francisco, which has a lot of Chinese, but again it was Eli Lilly who thought that you could understand people through their art and have empathy for it. And he hoped likewise that a sense of beauty and tranquility would resonate with locals, so that we would change a little bit.

How do you feel about the Cultural Revolution and what it did for appreciation of Chinese art?

Nothing good. I see nothing good. They lost almost an entire generation of scholars, and the one thing about scholarship is it tends to be handed down from professor to student, like Buddhist teachings. If you wipe out a whole generation, it's lost. I had a maid in Taiwan when I was over for the first time. I asked her all these questions, and she said "I don't know, my grandmother hadn't told me before I left Beijing." The transmission of culture just within her family was broken by her leaving, and the Cultural Revolution really did that. There were some great scholars in the 30s, 40s, 50s, and after the Cultural Revolution there were still a few of them sticking around, but they were dying off, and they hadn't imparted their knowledge. But like grass that's killed, given time it will replenish itself. Young scholars right now are going back and picking it up.

With China on the rise, it seems like a prescient move of yours to pursue this avenue of study.

When I was in college, they said the pessimist studied Russian, the optimist studied Chinese. This was at the height of the cold war. It's definitely an up-and-coming country, there's no doubt about that. The brainpower and the artistry that has historically been there is still there, and you're dealing with billions of people (in China). If we say 3 percent of the U.S. population are intelligent or science wonders or geniuses, imagine what 3 percent of a billion is.