Densatil Sculpture and the Capital Museum, Beijing, China

The Capital Museum houses one of the best collections of Densatil sculptures available. Densatil sculptures originate generally from the Densatil Monastery (or surrounding monasteries where the artists also worked) founded by Pagmodrupa Dorje Gyalpo, one of the four principal students of Gampopa, in turn the student of Milarepa. Many of these sculptures, now in museums spread around the world, were used to decorate the stupa, or reliquary, containing the mortal remains of Pagmodrupa.

Densatil Resources:
Capital Museum, Beijing, China - website
Capital Museum sculpture on the HAR site
Densatil Page, HAR site
Beijing Quick Guide Outline

Golden Buddhas from Tibet, Reconstruction of the Façade of a Stupa from Densathil
History of the Drigung Kagyu with reference to Densatil

Densatil Images:
Images 1
Images 2
Images 3
Images 4

Daewon-Sa Tibetan Museum in Korea

The HAR site lists three museums in Korea that have collections of Himalayan and Tibetan style art. Several of these museums such as the Daewon-Sa and the Hahn Cultural Foundation specialize in Himalayan style art. It is rumoured that there are possibly an additional two more museums of Himalayan art in Korea. These other museums, like the one introduced here, are thought to be museums attached to Buddhist Temples, unlike the Hahn Collection or the National Museum of Korea.

"The Little Tibet in Korea, Daewon-Sa Tibetan Museum. Tibetan Museum is built to introduce spiritual culture and art and to activate the spiritual exchange between Korea and Tibet. The museum is built in the Tibetan Temple style." www.tibetan-museum.org.

See a listing of other Korean and Asian Museums.

Mongolian Treasures Uncovered

More Buddhist art treasures have been unearthed from the sands of the Gobi desert in Mongolia and taken to the Danza Rabjaa Temple. See other previously unearthed objects at the Danza Rabjaa Museum in the town of Sainshand. Also see the BBC news article.

New Images from the Asian Art Museum

Fourteen new images of paintings from the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco have been uploaded to the HAR site. Write-ups accompany most if not all of the images. Some Asian Art entries in the database have write-ups but no images as yet. In those cases we are using a place card holder thumbnail image.

European & Asian Museums Updated

The lists for both the European museums and the Asian museums have been updated. There are still many more to add and some have been listed without proper links. If you can think of any that we have missed then please e-mail us and let us know so that we can add them. For Mongolia only the main museums have been added. There are, possibly, twenty-three provinces and each has a provincial museum. India has many more museums with collections of Himalayan art than what we have listed. Documenting all of the Himalayan art in the world that resides in museum collections is an enormous and ongoing project.

American Museums Updated

So far, in the United States, there are sixty-two (62) museums in twenty-one (21) states that have been identified as having collections of Himalayan & Tibetan style art. It is very likely that there are a number of other museums out there not yet identified. Twenty (20) of these museums with images from their collections are currently represented on the Himalayan Art Resources (HAR) website. The HAR staff are continuing to contact and work with other museums in the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia, to encourage their participation in this global cultural endeavor.

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Patron and Painter

Patron and Painter
Rubin Museum of Art, New York
February 6, 2009 - August 17, 2009

Much like religious princes, the Karmapas, heads of the Karma Kagyu, one of Tibet's principal schools of Buddhism, traveled for centuries in large monastic tent encampments. These courts, which included portable temples, a community of monks, and skilled artists and artisans, produced their own distinctive painting style, known as the "Encampment style" (Gardri). The painter Namkha Tashi founded the style in the court of the Ninth Karmapa (1555-1603) in Central Tibet. He looked to Indian figural models and placed them in landscapes inspired heavily by the works of Chinese court painters.

Most of what we know of this painting tradition belongs to its eighteenth-century revival fostered by the great scholar-painter Situ Panchen (1700-1774) in Kham Province, Eastern Tibet, with its new artistic center at his monastic seat, Palpung. Even more important to the history of Tibetan art than Situ Panchen's role as a painter is his role as a patron and designer of paintings, many of which continue to be copied to this day. For the first time anywhere, this exhibition traces the career and artistic legacy of one of the great patrons and artists in Tibetan history. (From the RMA website).

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Stable as a Mountain

Stable as a Mountain
Rubin Museum of Art, New York
March 13, 2009 - July 13, 2009

Portraiture is one of the most powerful and significant expressions of figurative art, and in the Himalayas the subjects of religious portraits are exclusively religious teachers, or gurus. By preserving the physical appearance of a guru, an icon is produced that can charismatically substitute for the teacher in his physical absence. As such these portraits often embody the teachings of the guru and the traits of the enlightened mind. (From RMA website).

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Toward Enlightenment: The Sacred Art of Tibet & Universe of a Deity: A Tibetan Sand Mandala

Toward Enlightenment: The Sacred Art of Tibet & Universe of a Deity: A Tibetan Sand Mandala
University Art Museum, UC Santa Barbara
April 1, 2009 – June 14, 2009

In conjunction with the historic fourth visit to UC Santa Barbara by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama in April, the University Art Museum announces an exclusive presentation of historic and living art of the Himalayas. Toward Enlightenment: The Sacred Art of Tibet prime examples of Tibetan paintings from the 14th to 19th centuries. The exhibition highlights the multi-level functioning of the art and its themes of transformation of the profound into the worldly with a strong emphasis on depictions of teaching. These paintings echo the purity and precision of visionary buddhas, bodhisattvas, archetypal deities, lama portraits, and protectors. (From UAM UCSB website).

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Marvels of the Malla Period

Marvels of the Malla Period: A Nepalese Renaissance 1200-1603.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art.
December 22, 2007 – June 1, 2008.

In this exhibition, the Philadelphia Museum presents masterpieces from its own outstanding collection of rarely seen Malla Period art. Vibrant Buddhist ritual paintings burst with energy, a marvelous goddess coyly dances, and golden Hindu and Buddhist sculptures regally invite adoration. From INTRODUCTION.

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Collections on the Site

Sometimes I don't think that visitors to the site are aware of how many different museums, institutions and private collections are actually represented on HAR. There is an Outline Page titled Collections Worldwide that lists all of these different collections. For many of the museums we have formal agreements and received the images directly from them, in some cases along with stipulations as to attribution and dating. There are some museums listed on the outline page that we are still trying to include on the site. These collections will not have a HAR link icon following their name.

We don't have formal relationships with all of the museums. For some we have simply taken digital photographs of the Himalayan objects that are on display in their galleries such as for the National Museum of India, the Capital Museum in Beijing, and others. This is only done in museums that allow photography, generally without the use of a camera flash.

There are well over one hundred Private & Photographic Archive Collections on the site. The first thing that you will probably think is that there aren't one hundred names listed on the page just provided. This is true. Most of the private collections prefer to be anonymous and are found under the title of Private Collections and on the outline page are found under the heading of Unnamed Collections. Probably it would be more clear and accurate if we change this to Anonymous Collections. All of theses collections come from all over the world. Some are professionally photographed and others are not. The Photographic Archives are generally collections of images taken of art in situ of murals or architecture in the Himalayan regions, Tibet, Mongolia, etc.

Other museum collection resources on the site can be found through the HAR Links page. Under Subject there are three museum listings : Museums Asia, Museums Europe, and Museums North America. Under North America also see USA Museums by State. These pages were the first attempt by HAR some years ago to try and locate collections of Himalayan art around the world and make them more widely known. These lists are are in desperate need of updating and are quite inaccurate by today's standards and what is currently known. We will try and have these updated in November.