The Rubin Museum Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room presents religious art in context. Visitors experience a sacred space similar to a shrine room found in a prosperous Tibetan household where religious objects are displayed and used in ritual and devotional practices. Most of the objects in this installation are from the Rubin Museum’s collection. They are supplemented by select objects on long-term loan. The main and essential elements of any Tibetan Buddhist shrine room are 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 Buddha’s speech, and stupas symbolize the Buddha’s mind as well as his formless body.
The objects—including scroll paintings and sculptures of buddhas, bodhisattvas, tantric deities, female deities, wrathful deities, and teachers—are arranged on traditional Tibetan furniture according to the hierarchy they assume in Tibetan Buddhist practices. Such practices involve the use of ritual items, also shown here, including butter lamps, offering bowls, ewers, vajras, bells, horns, hand-drums, and a conch trumpet. Hanging textile decorations on pillars and along the walls serve as offerings as well as ornamentation, making the space suitable for the presence of the deities invoked in daily practices and rituals. The room is complete with low tables, cushions, and traditional tea cups used during religious practices and ceremonies.
