Keeping Track of Art All Over Asia HONG KONG - One Filipina artist had to cajole her mentor into letting her preserve his materials, and it's a good thing she did - before a typhoon struck Manila and flooded his home. Meanwhile, in New Delhi, her colleague practically moved into the house of two Indian art-scene icons in order to document their collections. The Asia Art Archive has sent researchers around the region to dig into homes, studios, libraries, private archives and small galleries - to collect materials on contemporary art, scan them and save them. They now have 300,000 digital images, and it's growing. And as I reported Monday, they've begun opening up their archive to the public, providing free online access to many primary materials previously lost to the public eye. The A.A.A. founder Claire Hsu told me Asia has done a poor job in documenting modern and contemporary art - never mind how fashionable or lucrative it's gotten. She also spoke about how her Hong Kong nonprofit group put the project together on a shoestring budget, and why this work could never have been done by a major Chinese museum or university.