Marylin Rhie received her MA (1965) and Ph.D. (1970) from the University of Chicago in Chinese Buddhist Art. Since 1974 she has been teaching at Smith College and is Jessie Wells Post Professor of Art and Professor of East Asian Studies. She teaches a variety of courses in Asian art history, including courses on a regular basis on the art of China , Korea , Japan and Tibet as well as Buddhist Art and a survey of Asian Art. She has taught a number of interdisciplinary courses with other members of the Smith faculty over the years, and regularly teaches Thought and Art in China together with Prof. Gardner of the History Department.

Her research work is primarily in Chinese, Central Asian, Tibetan and Korean Buddhist art. She has authored numerous articles on such subjects as the cave temples of T'ien-lung shan [Tianlongshan], the inter-relationships between the art of India , Central Asia and China during the T'ang dynasty, and the chronologies of Chinese Buddhist art of the Six Dynasties and Sui period. She has published books on the art of Tibet (co-authored with Prof. Robert Thurman of Columbia University ): Wisdom and Compassion, the Sacred Art of Tibet (1991, 1992, 1999 with translations into German, Spanish, Catalan, Japanese and Chinese) and a book on the Rubin collection of Tibetan art: Worlds of Transformation (1999). A third collaboration on The Tibetan Shrine, the collection of Alice Kandell , is forthcoming. Rhie and Thurman also co-currated the international exhibition of Wisdom and Compassion, which traveled to 11 venues in America , Europe and Asia during the 1990's. She has completed 2 volumes of a four-volume series on the Early Buddhist Art of China and Central Asia , published by Brill Academic Press (Vol. I: 1999; Vol. II: 2002; Vol. III due for completion in 2007). Future books are planned on the Buddhist Cave Temples of T'ien-lung shan, T'ang Dynasty Buddhist Sculpture, and the Buddhist Sculpture of Late Silla and Early Koryo ( Korea ).

Phone: 413-585-3138
Building: Hillyer Hall 305
E-mail: mrhie@smith.edu