Himalayan Culture Greets Dalai Lama
“Contemporary Jewels: An Offering”
October 12, 2012—January 11, 2013
For immediate release: 10/15/12
For further information contact: Douglas Perkins, Administrative Operations Manager, at deperkin@middlebury.edu or (802) 443-5235
Middlebury, VT—In honor of the recent visit by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama to Middlebury and to celebrate Vermont’s connection with Himalayan culture, Middlebury College is hosting an exhibition of contemporary Tibetan art. Contemporary Jewels: An Offering presents eleven works by five artists of Tibetan heritage—Tenzin Norbu, Dorje Sherpa, Tsherin Sherpa, Tenzing Rigdol, and Palden Weinreb—all of whom were granted residencies at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson. The vast majority of the exhibit has been mounted on the upper level of the college’s Davis Family Library, while one work, Journey of My Teacher by Tenzing Rigdol, is on display in the entrance court of the Middlebury College Museum of Art in the Mahaney Center for the Arts.
Tenzing Rigdol, Journey of My Teacher, 2012, silk brocade and scripture, 79 x 79 inches. Courtesy the artist.
The works, on loan from participating artists and the Shelley and Donald Rubin Private Collection, are divergent in style and content, yet all evince the artists’ experience of the collision between Tibetan Buddhist tradition and contemporary culture brought forth through new, innovative applications of traditional artistic techniques.
In addition to Contemporary Jewels the Davis Family Library is also playing host to a number ofsacred Tibetan texts—ritual and liturgical texts and illuminated sutras on loan from the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center in Cambridge, MA—as well as several photographs taken by U. S. Senator Patrick Leahy on a trip to Tibet in 1988. The selected photographs are works which are often on view in Senator Leahy’s Washington office and for which His Holiness has previously expressed an affinity during visits with the senator.
These works of art, sacred books, and photographs will remain on view in their respective locations until January 11, 2013.
The Davis Family Library, located at 110 Storrs Avenue, is open Monday–Thursday 7:30 am–1 am, Friday 7:30 am–11 pm, Saturday 9 am–11 pm, and Sunday 9 am–1 am; alternate hours are in effect during college breaks and holidays. The Middlebury College Museum of Art, housed in the Mahaney Center for the Arts on Route 30, is open Tuesday–Friday 10–5, and Saturday and Sunday 12–5. It is closed Mondays. Both locations are physically accessible. Parking for the library is available along Storrs Avenue. Parking for the museum is available in the Mahaney Center for the Arts parking lot. For further information please call (802) 443–5000 or TTY (802) 443–3155, or visit either the library’s main web site at go.middlebury.edu/library or the museum’s website at museum.middlebury.edu.