Virtual Program, E-Lecture, Buddhas, Guardians, and Guides: How to Read Tibetan Paintings

Virtual Program, E-Lecture, Buddhas, Guardians, and Guides: How to Read Tibetan Paintings

Denise Patry Leidy - Ruth and Bruce Dayton Curator of Asian Art, Head of the Department of Asian Art, Yale University Art Gallery

Wednesday, February 8, 2023 - 12:30pm
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Although known as early as the 7th century, there is little visual evidence for Buddhist practice in Tibet until the 11th when paintings and sculptures illustrate an astonishing array of enlightened beings such as buddhas and bodhisattvas, guardians and guides. After introducing the primary types of deities featured in Tibetan practices, Denise Patry Leidy, the Ruth and Bruce Dayton Curator of Asian Art, highlights a newly acquired, and spectacular, 16th-century Tibetan mandala focused on the protective deity Sitatapatra (White Parasol), a guardian against malign supernatural forces. Recently conserved and on view for the first time, this mandala was produced in Ngor Monastery in central Tibet, famed for its painting workshops. It was commissioned by one of the abbots of this establishment in honor of an earlier teacher. Generously sponsored by the Martin A. Ryerson Lectureship Fund.

Closed captions will be available in English.


Denise Patry Leidy, the Ruth and Bruce Dayton Curator of Asian Art, received her master’s and doctoral degrees from Columbia University. Prior to joining the Gallery, she served as the Brooke Russell Astor Curator of Chinese Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and as curator at the Asia Society and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Denise has curated exhibitions such as Global by Design: Chinese Ceramics from the R. Albuquerque Collection (2016), Silla: Korea’s Golden Kingdom (2013), Red and Black: Chinese Lacquer from the 13th to the 16th Century (2012), and Hidden Treasure of Afghanistan (2009). Her publications include How to Read Chinese Ceramics (2015), Wisdom Embodied: Chinese Buddhist and Daoist Sculpture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2010), The Art of Buddhism: An Introduction to Its History and Meaning (2009), Mother-of-Pearl: A Tradition in Asian Lacquer (2006), and Treasures of Asian Art: The Asia Society’s Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller Collection (1994).

Tags: 
Region: 
Transregional, Tibet