Count Your Blessings: Dorsey + Pakhoutova

Anne Dorsey presents an illustrated talk on her collection of prayer beads, focusing on a few examples and the stories behind them with curator Elena Pakhoutova.
Spend some time before the talk exploring prayer beads of Buddhist traditions throughout Asia in the theater level gallery exhibition Count Your Blessings.

About the Speakers

Anne Dorsey has a BA from Wellesley College and an MA in Gerontology from San Francisco State University. She has been a student of Buddhist art, history, and practice since 1985. She has written on her collection of Buddhist prayer beads for Arts of Asia magazine (July/August 2004) and on Tibetan furniture (Wooden Wonders, Pacific Asia Museum, 2004) for Orientations Magazine. Her professional career has included publishing, advertising, and real estate.
She served on the board of the Society for Asian Art (the adult educational support organization for the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco) for twelve years and continues to work on educational programming for the Museum. She has traveled extensively in Asia for three decades. Her home is in Berkeley, California.
Elena Pakhoutova is an assistant curator at the Rubin Museum of Art with a PhD in Asian Art History. Her background in Tibetan Buddhist studies contributed to her interdisciplinary approach to art history. Pakhoutova’s research interests include dialogue in the visual traditions of Inner Asia, text and image, art and ritual, art and Buddhist pilgrimage, art production and patronage, and narrative in Tibetan visual culture. Her other current interests are cross-cultural exchanges, material culture, and contemporary Tibetan Art.
While at the Rubin Museum she has developed and curated Once Upon Many Times: Legends and Myths in Himalayan Artand developed and co-curated Gateway to Himalayan Art (2010-present), the Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room from theAlice Kandell Collection, and Illuminated: The Art of Sacred Books. Along with other museum curators she also participated in the traveling cross-cultural exhibition Pilgrimage and Faith. Most recently she curated the new installment of The Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room and Count Your Blessings: the Art of Prayer Beads in Asia