This installation of a shrine room in one of the Museums galleries, presents religious art in context and allows visitors to experience a sacred space that could be found in a Tibetan household, in which religious objects would be displayed and used in ritual and devotional practices. Most of the objects, including many recently acquired or donated for this presentation, or from the Reuben Museum’s collection. They are supplemented by select objects that have been loaned to the Museum on a long-term basis. The main and essential elements of any Tibetan Buddhist shrine room are those objects that represent the Buddha’s body, speech, and mind. Images of buddhas, bodhisattvas, deities, and teachers, are thought of as representations of the body of the Buddha. Books of Buddhist scripture are the physical manifestations of the Buddhist speech, and stupas symbolize the Buddhist mind as well as his formless body.
All of the objects–scroll paintings, as well as sculptures of buddhas, bodhisattvas, Tantric deities, female deities, wrathful deities, and teachers–have been arranged on traditional Tibetan furniture, and according to the hierarchy they assume in Tibetan Buddhist practices. Such practices involve the use of various ritual items, also shown here, including butter lamps, offering bowls, ewers, vajras, bells, a conch trumpet, horns, and hand-drums. Textile decorations on the walls, pillars, and ceiling serve as offerings as well as ornamentation. The room is complete with low tables, cushions, and traditional tea cups, that would be used during our religious practices and ceremonies.
