As the first China Institute Gallery exhibition dedicated solely to Chinese Buddhist art, this exhibition presented more than seventy magnificent stone sculptures, steles, gilt bronze objects, and clay votive tablets from the Beilin Museum 碑林博物馆, which houses one of the world’s most important collections of Buddhist stone sculptures. Many of the seventy-six objects in the exhibition were excavated in the last twenty-five years and were being exhibited in the West for the first time. By tracing the stylistic development from the Northern (420–589), through the Sui (581–618) to the Tang (618–907) dynasties, this exhibition illuminated important themes in Buddhist art and religion that had not been explored before, paving new paths for scholarship.
Buddhist Sculpture from China: Selections from the Xi’an Beilin Museum, Fifth through Ninth Centuries
碑林藏佛教造像选萃
Exhibition Catalogue
Authors: Annette L. Juliano, et al.
By tracing five centuries of stylistic development that span from the Northern dynasties to the Tang dynasty, this catalog illuminates important themes in Buddhist art and religion that have never been explored before, paving new paths for scholarship.
Exhibition catalog, 2007. Paperback, 155 pages: ill. ISBN: 978-0-9774054-2-8
Media Coverage
- Holland Cotter, “Art Review: On the Roads of China, the Buddha Was Transformed,” The New York Times, November 2, 2007.
“That power lingers in China still, through Buddhist sculptures being recovered by archaeologists. And it is humming away at the China Institute in ‘Buddhist Sculpture from China: Selections From the Xi’an Beilin Museum,’ a superlative exhibition with a longish history.”
“But what makes the show especially stimulating is the abundance of images that confuse, contradict or entirely depart from accepted art historical categories or classical notions of beauty.”
Media Coverage
- Asian Art
- China Press 侨报
- Orientations
- World Journal 世界日报
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