Sister Max: A Surprising Life Story

I first heard about Sister Max and her gallery from the late artist Uttam Nepali. It was 1987, and I had just opened the Siddhartha Art Gallery with Shashikala Tiwari in Pratap Bhawan, Kathmandu. Uttam Nepali (1937–2021) told me Max had set up a gallery some years ago next to the German Embassy (now the Surya Nepal Office) in Kantipath, which was just an arm’s distance from where we were located. I found this information reassuring, as there is nothing more important than location when starting a business.

At that time, Kantipath was the destination for artists—Palpasa Gallery and the British Council were on the same street, while the Sirjana Art Gallery, J Art Gallery, and Lalitkala Campus were around the corner. The gallery’s proximity to Durbar Marg and Thamel was advantageous, as this was where all the hotels, travel agents, restaurants, and shops were located.

Through Uttam Nepali, I learned that Max later took on Buddhist robes, closed the gallery, moved to India, and sometimes visited Kathmandu. Although he promised to connect us and told me Sister Max knew about me and my work, we never met, and Sister Max remained an enigma.

A meeting with my friend, the American artist Shelley Warren, in 2023, suddenly reopened the doors of my interest when she mentioned Sister Max had been instrumental in setting up Kopan Monastery. My first visit to Kopan was in 1987 for the enthronement of the young Spanish boy Lama Osel, who was believed to be the reincarnation of Lama Yeshe, the founder of Kopan Monastery. Shelley and her husband, Jim, came to Kopan for spiritual retreats.

While I was amazed to learn Sister Max had helped establish Kopan Monastery, Shelley was just as astounded to hear that Max once ran a gallery in Kathmandu. Before she returned to the United States, Shelley promised she would meet with Sister Max in New Mexico and ask about the gallery.

Shelley was true to her word, and she sent me articles and photographs and recorded her conversations with Sister Max, who was by then an octogenarian and in frail health. Among the photographs of gallery openings one stood out to me, as the celebrated Indian artist M. F. Husain (1915–2011) is in it. I was convinced the images were from Max’s time in India. I believe that if M. F. Husain had come to Nepal at any point, I would have known about it!

The eminent Nepalese artists Shashi Bikram Shah and Krishna Manandhar later told me they had attended an exhibition of M. F. Husain’s work at Max’s Gallery. Shashi Bikram Shah also recalled the gallery was “housed in the residence of Sri Jung Shah,” and he met with Sister Max at the home of the Nepalese artist Manuj Babu Mishra. Manuj Babu’s son, the artist Roshan Mishra, was unable to pull up any documents from his father’s archive. But through Peter Kedge, a longtime associate of Sister Max, I learned that Max had funded Roshan’s sister Manju’s education at Lincoln School in Kathmandu. Manju later earned a PhD in communications in Moscow, moved back to Nepal, and opened a communications college.

I later met Frances Howland and James Giambrone, longtime expatriate residents of Kathmandu, who knew Sister Max for her contribution to Kopan Monastery but not about the gallery. Shelley then introduced me to Judith Weitzner, who had journeyed to Nepal in the 1960s and knew Sister Max well. I finally had my lead.

Sister Max, born Max Mathews in 1933 in Virginia, United States, was a Black American with a master’s degree from Columbia University. Max may have sought liberation from the 1950s racism of her country through travel. According to Peter Kedge, Max was employed by the US Department of Defense, which at that time oversaw the US International Schools network, so she had postings in Athens, Berlin, Moscow, then Kathmandu. While teaching at the American International Schools in these countries, she gravitated toward artists and poets.

In 1965, Max taught at the American International Lincoln School in Kathmandu as a fourth-grade teacher. Judith, who was a third-grade teacher at that time, remembers their classrooms were next to each other. She described Max as a “creative and engaging teacher” who looked stylish even in the simple Punjabi kurta that she wore to work.

Judith recalls that Max set up her residence above the gallery before moving to the heart of the busy Ason Tole bazaar. Max playfully referred to the four-story house as her “penthouse.” The second and third floors served as her apartment, and the terrace had an unrivalled view of Kathmandu. Judith says the Ason penthouse was filled with artworks from Max’s travels—rugs, Jewish Russian paintings, thangkas, and Indian furniture.

Peter Kedge shared that when Max was in Moscow, “She somehow became involved in the plight of persecuted Jews, many of whom were in prison but creating art. Max bought a lot of their art, and a container load of Jewish art followed Max to Kathmandu.” Max also purchased many Tibetan thangkas and statues from Tibetan refugees who had fled Tibet and were selling these artworks to support themselves. In an interview with Sister Max in the Lama Yeshe Archive, Sister Max states she “paid what the refugees asked for and gave them what they needed.”

In both her apartment and gallery, Max held salons. She dressed in fine brocade and Tibetan attire and entertained personalities like King Mahendra, also a poet and patron of the arts; the Prince of Cambodia; old friends from her travels; and new friends from Kathmandu, like the dashing Swiss pilot Hardy Fuerer, and Peter Kedge, who also took up the dharma. Judith recounted the time Max bought a 1932 Hudson convertible limousine from her contact in the Royal Place to get around Kathmandu, which hardly had any paved roads at that time. 

In 1941, the late Narottam Das Shrestha set up the first art gallery, Kathmandu Kalamandir, in Kalimati. Yet the 1940s proved premature for an arts scene, and the gallery closed after a year. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, art exhibitions were held at the USIS building on New Road, in the Indian Library opposite Tundikhel, and in Saraswati Sadan opposite Tri Chandra Campus. The Nepal Arts Council was established only in 1962, and the Nepal Association of Fine Arts (now Nepal Academy of Fine Arts) was set up at the behest of King Mahendra in 1965.

Max decided to set up her gallery. She had a vast collection of Jewish Russian art she needed to sell. As she was used to keeping company with artists, writers, and poets, it was only natural that her gallery transitioned to become an alternative private space for Nepalese artists to exhibit their work.

Max’s Gallery opened in 1967 and was housed in a two-story building in Kantipath across from the American Embassy Consulate office. It also had a café where events and book readings took place. Visitors included her friends, artists and poets, local luminaries, members of the small expatriate community, and scholars and anthropologists who had come to Nepal to conduct their studies. Many of these scholars stayed at the Panorama Hotel in New Road, where the rooms were cheap and the owner, whom everyone referred to as “Dad,” helped change dollars on the black market.

Max also befriended the “Dooley Girls” or “Dooley Dollies,” young stewardesses who came to Nepal on a training program through Pan American Airlines that flew to Calcutta, India. These women also visited the gallery. Judith remembers that when Max taught at school, her assistant “Tiger,” a person of short stature with a good command of English, ran the gallery.

In 1969, Max exhibited the works of Uttam Nepali, Gehendra Man Amatya, Dil Bahadur Chitrakar (1929–2010), Deepak Shimkhada, and Kenyan artist Anthony Marciano, as well as contemporary Russian paintings, local children’s art, French art reproductions, and Indian batiks. This information is documented in Andrea del Rubia’s thesis paper “Modern Art of Nepal (1850–1990): Picturing a Nation, Performing an Identity,” but the paper does not mention the late M. F. Husain’s exhibition or that Gehendra Man Amatya had three solo shows at the gallery. Gehendra Man Amatya shared that Max also organized an exhibition of his works in Chicago. At this time, the artist Madan Chitrakar had also returned from the Sir J. J School of Art, Mumbai, and designed some of the graphics for Max.

In my correspondence with Peter Kedge, he shared that Max “brought artists, art, speakers, and musicians from India” to Nepal. Eventually, Max decided to focus solely on Nepalese artists. King Mahendra, pleased with Max’s interest in promoting Nepalese art, inaugurated some of her exhibitions. 

I called the artist Deepak Simkhada in Claremont, California, who said Max’s Gallery was a pioneering initiative. A year later, two other private galleries opened: the Prithivi Gallery, established by Hemadri Rana and Uttam Nepali in Lal Durbar (now the Hotel Yak & Yeti, Durbar Marg), and the Arniko Gallery, established by Hanuman Das in Maitidevi. Dr. Deepak Shimkhada, a student at the Baroda School of Arts at that time, remembers being drawn to Max’s great collection of music—the records of Duke Ellington, Nat King Cole, and Jimmy Smith—and credits his love of jazz to Max’s Gallery.

In 1968, Max revisited Greece, connected with old friends, and met Marty Widener, a fellow American who made an overland trip to Nepal in a Volkswagen to woo her. The two married in a grand ceremony in the palatial Rana house in Tinchuli, Boudha, which Max and Marty rented.

In November of the same year, Max’s old friends from her days in Mykonos, Greece—Ira Cohen, Petra Voigt, Timothy Leary, and Zina Rachevsky, former Hollywood actress, wealthy socialite, and friend of the Beat poet Alan Ginsberg—visited Max’s Gallery with two Tibetan Buddhist monks: Lama Thubten Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. In an interview documented in the Lama Yeshe Archive, Max recounts it was Thanksgiving Day, and there was a party in the gallery when Zina walked in with Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. Although Zina had run a rival salon in Greece, they had remained friends.

Zina had now embraced Tibetan Buddhism and was one of the first foreigners or foreign women to study with Tibetan lamas after Alexandra David-Néel. According to the Kopan Monastery website, Lama Zopa Rinpoche and Lama Yeshe met in the Indian refugee camp in Buxa Duar after fleeing Tibet in 1959. Zina had met the monks in India and decided they needed to set up a Buddhist center in Kathmandu. The Dalai Lama had instructed Lama Zopa and Lama Yeshe to spread the dharma beyond India and reach out to the Western world. At the dinner, Zina asked Max to help the monks.

The following day, Max visited the lamas in a Gelukpa monastery in Boudha and had a profound epiphany. She realized a past life association with Buddhism may have catalyzed her journey to Nepal. Soon afterward, Max separated from her husband as the call to Buddhism was strong. Judith remembers the moment when Max shaved her long hair, took on robes, and was ordained a Buddhist nun

Zina wanted to set up an artist’s village with residency programs and a meditation center where lamas would also teach. Bryan Whyte, another longtime resident of Nepal, shared that Zina and the monks lived in a cottage once rented to the American embassy due to its view of the valley. After some time, the house was purchased with additional land from the royal astrologer/preceptor to set up what is today Kopan Monastery.

To help Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa construct the monastery and purchase the surrounding land, Sister Max donated the proceeds from the sale of artworks. She invited the monks to take the Tibetan statues and thangkas in her collection for the monastery. Sister Max also donated her salary from Lincoln School. She was the sole benefactor of the Kopan Monastery project at this difficult time.

Later, on the advice of Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa, Max gave up teaching at Lincoln School, closed the gallery, moved to Ason Tole, and then to Kopan to help with the tasks at hand. As Max was responsible for the welfare and education of 20 young monks and several lamas at the beginning of Kopan Monastery, she became known as “Mummy Max” for her maternal role.

She worked hard at developing business strategies to raise funds for Kopan Monastery to provide food and shelter for the monks, clothing, medical care, teachers, and school supplies. The children’s artworks were sold in Berkley, California, to raise money to support the school and the monks. She even sold the Hudson convertible for this purpose.

Max moved to India in the 1980s to fundraise. In India, she transformed antique Indian saris into high-end fashion and then forayed into tailoring and designing beaded and sequined gowns, which were then sold in Milan, Paris, and New York. Her international success with her fashion line and her immersion in Buddhism earned her the moniker “Sister Max.” Her vision, mission, and designs made it into the September 12, 1983, issue of Newsweek Magazine with the headline, “Sister Max’s Divine Designs.”

In a 1996 article titled “Sister Max Working for Others—Engaged Buddhism,” Jan Willis documented Sister Max’s journey in uplifting the lives of others and referenced the Newsweek article:

Thirteen years ago, an American woman named Max journeyed to Nepal, was ordained a Tibetan Buddhist nun and renounced the material life. Then her karma became truly curious: Sister Max became a high-fashion designer. The ascetic woman of the East now dresses some of the West’s wealthiest and most glamorous women. Her shimmering sequined, jagged-hemmed sheaths, delicate pastel gowns with beaded flowers and electric-hued silk jackets are among this season’s most resplendent evening wear.

Willis wrote, “It was a miracle—one blessed by Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa, but engineered by the inventiveness and vision of Sister Max. I remember being thrilled that year when, on the evening of the Academy Awards, female celebrities entering that hall of glitter and glamour responded to reporters’ queries about the gowns they were sporting: This is a ‘Sister Max’!”

After the fashion business waned, Sister Max sold Indian antique furniture in Boulder, Colorado, to support Kopan Monastery.

In India, Max’s journey of compassion and kindness unfolded after she met Kiran Bedi, then the inspector general of Tihar jail. Through this connection, Sister Max started to do work for the upliftment of the female inmates. Her work with both the inmates and Kopan Monastery earned her a spot on the The Oprah Winfrey Show. She has credited her life’s journey to Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche, with a humble declaration that the lamas “gave me a reason to be.”

In the midst of writing this article, Judith reached out to let me know that Sister Max was dying. Five days later, Shelley sent me a message saying Sister Max had passed away peacefully on February 16, 2024, in Santa Fe, “surrounded by compassionate, caring students of Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche.” I was saddened to hear this news. As a fellow gallerist, my quest to research and document Sister Max’s contribution to the arts led me to admire facets of Max’s life—her compassion, selflessness, and unwavering support and contribution to the founding of Kopan Monastery.

Though Max’s Gallery ran for only four years, there is no doubt that it played an important role as a pioneering art space that inspired many artists and others, including myself many decades later, in Kathmandu. 

This article was first published in The Kathmandu Post in March 2024. It has been edited from the original.