The concept of rebirth is central to Buddhism, which shows that every individual has more than one life. That also seems to be true for the Rubin Museum of Art, one of the most important locations of New York City for viewing Buddhist works. Although the institution ditches his doors permanently in October 2024, one of the most cherished installations, takes a new existence: The Rubin Museum Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room Will be opened again on Wednesday for a stay of six years in the Brooklyn Museum.
The sanctuary spaceWhich Holland Cotter, the most important art critic of the New York Times, Once described As ‘beautiful’ is now on the second floor of the Brooklyn Museum, in his art of Asia galleries, where it is a darker jewel clamped between a series of modernist white boxes. Carefully put together again to record the same wooden posts and overhead rays as at the Rubin, the 400 square base closed space also contains the transparent glass doors of the original, both of which welcome to spectators and carefully shut them out of outer noise.
“We didn’t want the Shrine Room to be a main road,” said Joan Cummins, senior curator of the Brooklyn Museum of Asian Art, in an interview on the site.
Inside the space looks like it had fallen into intact from a prosperous Tibetan house, with colorful Thangkas, or Scroll paintings, as well as extensive decorations to welcome gods. Silver that offers bowls and images of gods in different metals are on top of painted furniture, along with musical instruments – an elegant bell, a shell reused as a trumpet, Mongolian basins attached to flowing silk.
The vague scent of incense fills the air, together with the included songs of Buddhist monks and nuns. The Shrine Room invites visitors, not only to stare at more than 100 artifacts from nine centuries, but also to sit on small stools and to experience the space as a Tibetan family: as a place for meditation or prayer, as a refuge of a front world.
“For objects standing in something that was reminiscent of their original context is a very, very powerful experience,” said Jorrit Britschgi, the executive director of Rubin, in a telephone interview.
Trying to guarantee the stability of the Rubin, the leaders said in A statement last year That they redefine the 21-year-old institution as a ‘worldwide museum’ without walls. Now the Rubin Museum of Himalayan ArtIt has retained its collection and continues to borrow its treasures and organize traveling shows.
The sanctuary is being First important installation in New York Because the building in Manhattan is closed. The leaders of the museum thought it was especially important to find this exhibition a temporary local house: because it was opened at the Rubin in 2013, the Shrine Room welcomed more than a million visitors, including devoted as the actor Michael Imperiolithe artist Laurie Anderson and the musician MobyAs well as legions of typical New Yorkers.
“There was a woman in particular who would come every day when the museum was open,” said Elena Pakhoutova, the curator of the Shrine Room and a senior curator of Himalaya art in the Rubin, in an interview. Around 11 am this visitor would appear, go directly to the sanctuary space, sit there for 15 minutes and then leave. “That was her practice,” said Pakhoutova.
An even wider audience can come to space after the move and reopening, which have been carefully selected: this year is 11 June Saga Dawa Duchenwho marks the birth, enlightenment and death of the Buddha in Tibetan culture. The Rubin opted for the Brooklyn Museum for its large, diverse audience and the on-site admission policy that you can guarantee the accessibility of the Shrine Room.
“We are going to have many people who accidentally discover the Rancing Room,” said Cummins, the Brooklyn curator. “And I think that for many of them will be a bit magical – to run across this room where art is shown in such a compelling way that is so different from how we show art in the adjacent spaces.”
Just like at the original location, the room has no labels. The Brooklyn Museum has stationed a large touchscreen outside, where visitors can tap the objects in an image of the Shrine Room to learn about their history – A virtual exploration That is also on the website of the museum.
But the reincarnated Shrine Room also differs from the original. Due to space restrictions, two of the most impressive pieces, the richly painted wooden Angry sanctuary doorsIt is thought that it came from a small 19th-century Tibetan sanctuary dedicated to the fierce protector God Mahakala-Hij Staart of their surface sits now just outside the room.
It also has transformations. The Rubin has turned the objects of the room – almost all of them come His own collection – Every two years to display each of the four most important traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, a practice that will continue the Brooklyn Museum. The moment the Rubin closed, the Shrine Room contained the Kagyu tradition. Now it embodies the more recent Lucky traditionAnd all his thangkas and about half of his sculptures have been replaced.
Happiness is “known for his learning and science,” said Pakhoutova. The pieces of the room that can now be seen for the first time since 2015 include a 20th-century metalwork statue that Tsongkhapa, the 14th-century founder of tradition, and a silk brokaat Thangka from the 19th century that Tara displays a female Buddha.
“She tends to be someone with whom you pray for a kind of worldly worries, long life, health,” said Cummins.
Being under such objects cannot help to impress visitors who penetrate, she noticed.
“It transports,” said Cummins. “It’s like getting into Tibet.”
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