Far from being frowned upon as uncreative, in China, Korea, and Japan, copying has long been considered a valuable practice. Through works of art spanning ancient to contemporary times, Copies and Invention in East Asia challenges our understanding of originality, and presents copying as an act of imaginative interpretation. The exhibition includes burial goods that conjure a world for the deceased; Buddhist sculptures produced in multiples to amplify religious experience and meaning; paintings in which a master’s brushstrokes are faithfully duplicated as a way of shaping the self; and contemporary works that address multiplicity and duplication in the modern world.