There are several present and future exhibits of Buddhist art in the city that I’m excited about. The Eight Venerable Drugu Choegyal Rinpoche, a master of the Drukpa Kagyu tradition and a painter in traditional and contemporary idioms, has shows at both Tibet House and at Tria Gallery.

I don’t know if this painting of Milarepa will be included in the Tibet House show, but I hope so.



Ditto for this one:

Meanwhile, over at the Met, there is an ongoing show titled Early Buddhist Manuscript Painting: The Palm-Leaf Tradition. Here’s the description:
This installation of thirty palm-leaf folios features some of the earliest surviving Indian illuminated manuscripts dating from the tenth to the thirteenth century. It centers on one remarkable Mahayanist Buddhist text, the Ashtasahasrika Prajnaparamita Sutra (“Perfection of Wisdom”), illustrated through the Museum’s rare holdings of eastern Indian and Nepalese illuminated palm-leaf manuscripts, book-covers, initiation cards, thankas, and sculptures.

Indian illustrated palm-leaf manuscripts from this period are extremely rare, and the few that survived did so outside India, principally in the monasteries of Tibet. The painting style in these earliest surviving manuscripts reflects stylistic conventions developed in Indian temple and monastic mural painting, now almost completely lost to us. Thus these manuscript paintings provide a unique insight into Indian painting styles at the close of the first millennium A.D.

Even in a city of eight million, there are probably not that many people who get excited by rare Sanskrit-language folios, so I am pretty much legally obliged to turn out and support this.