Project Himalayan Art, the Rubin Museum’s largest institutional project to date that supports the advancement of an underrepresented field, is now live. The monumental project is the first project of its kind to offer comprehensive, introductory resources for learning about Himalayan art, with a focus on the cross-cultural exchange of Tibetan, Himalayan, and Inner Asian art and cultures. It features an expansive digital platform, traveling exhibition to university museums, and a cross-disciplinary publication featuring essays from 72 international scholars.
The new digital platform is a hub for the study of Himalayan art whether you’re a student, teacher, scholar, or visitor looking to expand your understanding of Himalayan art and cultures. It features material from the introductory traveling exhibition, Gateway to Himalayan Art, which opened this month at its first venue, Lehigh University Art Galleries, 108 object essays from the publication (available for pre-order today), videos, 360 degree object views, an interactive map, a glossary of hundreds of definitions, over 1,000 object images, and much more.
“Himalayan art bridges and traverses the regional spaces defined by the somewhat arbitrary academic divisions, such as East Asia or South Asia,” said Rubin Museum curators Elena Pakhoutova and Karl Debreczeny. “It visually expresses the Buddhist, Hindu, and Bon religious cultures, as well as indigenous beliefs from the greater Himalayan mountain region, the Tibetan Plateau, and beyond, reflecting uninterrupted cross-cultural exchange. What binds this complex web of connections is Buddhism and the legacy of Tibetan Buddhists as agents of cultural production in which religious masters, ordinary people, and artists and their works, forms, and methods traveled and transformed different areas. Our hope is that this project and its resources not only inspire a next generation of scholars that can expand the field of Himalayan art, but that Tibetan, Himalayan, and Inner Asian arts and cultures become incorporated in presentations of broader Asia.”
The Project Himalayan Art multiyear campaign is underway and the supporter list is in formation.
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