Each year the museum lends thousands of specimens to researchers and other institutions.

Closer to home, the museum has already lent some of its prized objects to the Metropolitan Museum.

In all, 18 Japanese museums, corporations and collectors and four American sources lent items to the show.

Scheduled for completion in 2002, the new museum does not easily lend itself to prior appraisal.

But with a fan (the museum will lend one) you can comfortably cross its threshold into long-ago eras.

Alexander S. G. Rower, director of the foundation and the artist's grandson, said he hoped museums and collectors would lend other works.

Other museums lend locally, and some even borrow long-term from the National Gallery and then re-lend within their states.

Greek museums, upset by the choice of Atlanta, have lent nothing, but the curators here have recovered nicely.

Even though none of its holdings are for sale, the museum will readily lend works.

But when museums lend entire shows, other arrangements are common, Ms. Getchell said.