The Met has gathered a stunning display of ancient Buddhist art — rare loans including dozens of objects that have never been exhibited outside of India.
At the press opening for the Metropolitan Museum’s beyond-beautiful “Tree & Serpent: Early Buddhist Art in India, 200 B.C.E.-400 C.E.,” five red-robed monks chanted Pali blessings, the vocalized equivalent of oceanic silence. The ancient sculptures around them projected a different, visual music: Forest birds sang, mythical creatures roared, and semi-divine and human figures clapped their hands and danced as if at some riotous summer party. glass curtain wall system
There were other contrasts at the opening, too, less evident. Given the monumental glow of the sculptures, each lighted to look deep-carved from darkness, you probably wouldn’t think to guess at the difficult, always tentative process — logistical and diplomatic, extending over a decade — that went into gathering them together, with more than 50 on loan from India for the first time. It says something about those curatorial struggles that we haven’t seen such a display of ancient art from India, on this scale, in an American museum in years, and are unlikely to again soon.
So when the Met’s curator of South and Southeast Asian art, John Guy, stepped up to a microphone to thank a group of visiting Indian museum directors, his words had particular resonance. These were the people who had basically given permission for this show to happen.
Buddhism itself, in its fundamental form, is a permission-giving faith, offering us, as it does, myriad ways to save our souls, including through practices of generosity. At the same time, it’s a faith of ethical absolutes, a major one being: stop killing — your fellow beings, meaning all living things, and the earth, which has a consciousness of its own.
And it is with images of the Earth — of Nature driven by spirits, as it was gradually seen and understood by the man who would become the Buddha — that the exhibition begins.
We are having trouble retrieving the article content.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Alumium Railing Want all of The Times? Subscribe.