Asian Art

The museum's Asian collections focus primarily on the religious arts of South Asia. They represent living religious traditions that originated in India thousands of years ago and spread throughout Asia and around the globe—Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.

Indian Buddhism is represented by a majestic late 2nd-century sandstone Buddha from Mathura, one of the most important such works in an American museum, and a remarkable black stone Pala Buddha from the 10th century. A 14th-century gilded bronze statue from Tibet represents Buddha Shakyamuni, the “Great One of the Sakya clan,” seated on a throne of lotus petals at the moment of his awakening.

The richness of the Hindu religious imagination can be seen in an 11th-century sculpture of Vishnu resting on the cosmic ocean, dreaming the world between the cycles of time as his consort Lakshmi presses his feet, and in the image of the goddess Durga destroying illusion in the form of Mahisha the buffalo-demon. A 10th-century bronze altar representing the Jina Rishabhanatha enshrined offers eloquent testimony to the third great Indian religious tradition, Jainism.

The collection also includes paintings, including an important 17th-century thangka depicting the patriarch of the Ngor Monastery, one of the three greatest Sakyapa institutions in Tibet, and a 19th-century painting of the Cosmic Man, a visualization of the Jain conception of the universe. Over the past decade, the museum has been building a collection of Indian paintings depicting scenes from the great Indian epic, the Ramayana, and images of the Vishnu avatars. Highlights include the 19th-Century painting of The Coronation of Rama, as well as the first photograph in this collection, a large-scale photograph of the Hindu deity Vishnu by contemporary artist Manjari Sharma.