Celebrating Asian Art

On view through June 2023

Due to their sensitivity to light and climate, the gallery rotates Asian paintings and textiles in the permanent collection roughly every six months. The current installation, entitled The Assembly of Histories: A Fifteenth-Century Timurid Manuscript, highlights four early Tibetan paintings, including a newly acquired and recently conserved 16th-century mandala dedicated to the Buddhist protector Sitatapatra. Storytelling is the focus of the West and South Asian rotations. Shown together for the first time are several pages from the Majma’ al-Tawarikh (Assembly of Histories), an early 15th-century account of world history since the time of Adam that was composed at the Timurid court in Herat, Afghanistan. Oft-Told Tales:Narrative Images from India and Iran explores the spatial effects and bright colors used to heighten the drama and emotion of narratives illustrated in the famed 11th-century Iranian Shahnama (Book of Kings) as well as in Indic classics, such as the Bhagavata Purana (History of the Lord) and the Gita Govinda (Song of Govinda). Captured Moments: Time in Chinese Painting presents the multifaceted approaches to time embedded in Chinese paintings, for example through references to the physical movement of the brush itself or through the tradition of adding inscriptions to artworks as marks of ownership and appreciation years after they were produced. Meanwhile, a selection of Japanese paintings, woodblock prints, and other works in the exhibition Snow, Moon, Flowers in Japanese Art, illustrates the seminal role of setsugekka, literally “snow, moon, and flowers.” This concept, which evokes the nostalgia inherent in the passage of time and the changing of the seasons, is deeply embedded in Japanese culture.

Buddhas, Guardians, and Guides: How to Read Tibetan Paintings
Denise Patry Leidy
Online program, February 8, 12:30pm
Although known as early as the 7th century, there is little visual evidence for Buddhist practice in Tibet until the 11th when paintings and sculptures illustrate an astonishing array of enlightened beings such as buddhas and bodhisattvas, guardians and guides. After introducing the primary types of deities featured in Tibetan practices, Denise Patry Leidy, the Ruth and Bruce Dayton Curator of Asian Art, highlights a newly acquired, and spectacular, 16th-century Tibetan mandala focused on the protective deity Sitatapatra (White Parasol), a guardian against malign supernatural forces. Recently conserved and on view for the first time, this mandala was produced in Ngor Monastery in central Tibet, famed for its painting workshops. It was commissioned by one of the abbots of this establishment in honor of an earlier teacher.

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