History, a hint of glamour, and the truth behind Hollywood fantasies are reflected in "Emerald Cities: Arts of Siam and Burma, 1775-1950" at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.

The glamour is provided by the remarkable story of the objects in it, among them scores of donations from the Doris Duke Southeast Asian Art Collection.  Given to the museum in 2002, the Duke bequests, added to the museum's already extensive holdings, makes the Asian Art Museum the site of one of the largest and most important collections of Siamese and Burmese art objects outside of Southeast Asia.

The show is the result of five years of effort by the exhibition's curators, who found the objects housed in the coach house, tennis courts and shooting gallery of Duke's palatial New Jersey estate. Many of the objects had been damaged in a hurricane, but the entirety of the collection constituted a rare find.

Duke, the heiress to an enormous tobacco fortune, had acquired many of the objects on a honeymoon tour of India, Thailand, Indonesia, and other Asian countries in 1935. It was her intention to construct a Thai palace in her home in Hawaii, but eventually the objects wound up in New Jersey. After her death in 1993, they became the responsibility of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, whose trustees decided to donate the collection to museums, including the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore and the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. 

According to Forest McGill, the Asian Art Museum's chief curator, the Walters and the Asian museums were selected to receive the bulk of the objects, and they decided who would get to pick first with the toss of a coin. The San Francisco museum won the toss and thus was able to make the first choice of objects from the Duke collection, a glamorous ending to a glamorous tale.

But let us not forget Hollywood. Most of us who are not Southeast Asian probably know what little we do of Thailand from the movies.

In the middle of the 19th century, an English widow and schoolmistress, Anna Leonowens, did a terrible disservice to the people of Thailand, which was then known as Siam.

Hired by King Rama IV (a.k.a. Mongkut) to teach English to his wives and children, Leonowens went on to write fanciful books about the Siamese court that formed the basis of many Western novels, musicals and movies, among them "The King and I" with Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner. In the movie, the king is portrayed as a blustery, polka-dancing despot, humbled by the superior knowledge of Anna, who has come to civilize the Siamese court.

"Rama IV was portrayed as a buffoon in 'The King and I,' " said Pat Chirapravati, co-curator of "Emerald Cities" at the press preview for the exhibition.

"In reality he was a serious scholar and Buddhist monk who taught himself English and worked hard to modernize his country," she said.

The world should learn more about the real kings of Thailand, said Chirapravati, who is a descendent of Rama IV and associate professor of art history at California State University, Sacramento. On her yearly visits to the country, she studies the rich history and culture of her native land and marvels at the accomplishments of the current King Rama IX, who is an expert on the water resources of his country, as well as a saxophone player who once jammed with Bill Clinton.

Chirapravati has a somewhat proprietary feeling about the exhibit, which contains many objects similar to ones she grew up with in her grandmother's house. It was a wealthy abode, for the word that best describes the art of Siam and Burma is sumptuous. Everything is decorated to a high degree with gold leaf, shiny bits of mirrors and colored glass, and elaborate finials on furniture, offering bowls and costumes.

The show reveals a culture as exotic and fantastical as the Emerald City of Oz. Its 140 objects – ornately carved furniture, lavishly decorated miniature shrines, gilded statues, richly illustrated manuscripts and colorfully detailed paintings – tell the history of two fabled Southeast Asian civilizations.