b'on view buddhas buddhisms: |across and beyond asiaSeptember 26, 2019March 14, 2020 (closed early due to COVID-19)LARGELY CURATED FROM THESCMA collection,to prints made in the American 1960s counterculture Buddhas | Buddhisms: Across and Beyond Asia wasmovement. An important work among the museums presented in the Carol T. Christ Asian Art Gallery.Asian art holdings, Japanese painter Sessh Tys The term buddha (enlightened or awakened one)Bodhidharma Crossing the Yangtze River on a Reed originally referred to Siddhrtha Gautama, a princefrom the 15th century, was featured in this exhibition. born in the sixth or fifth century BCE. Legend has itIt was on view for the first time at SCMA since being that he renounced royal life and meditated to achieveconserved, remounted and exhibited in Japan in enlightenment, breaking the endless cycle of suffer- 2015-2016. The exhibition also included a Gandharan ing and rebirth. His teachings were the foundation ofBodhisattva head from the Davis Museum at Wellesley Buddhism, yet buddha later came to be used forCollege, a 200-inch Chinese handscroll portraying not only this historical figure, but all beings that attainarhats from the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, enlightenment. Three major Buddhist doctrines de- and an eighth-century Japanese wooden pagoda and veloped in Asia, and often coexist in practice. Just asa set of Chinese arhat album leaves from the Mead Buddhism evolved into multiple forms, Buddhist im- Art Museum at Amherst College. These loans not only agery and art were also transformed by each culturefilled certain gaps in the SCMA collection, but also cre-that the religion encountered across and beyond Asia. ated an opportunity for these significant works from While the concept of Asia often arbitrarilynearby institutions to be studied in a fuller context.homogenizes diverse peoples and their divergentIn conjunction with Buddhas | Buddhisms, cultures, Buddhism is one of the few traditions thatSCMA invited Phillip E. Bloom, curator of the Chinese has connected distinctive Asian populations. ThisGarden and director of the Center for East Asian 2,500-year-old religion has been continually adaptingGarden Studies at the Huntington Library in California, to new environments and believers as it has devel- to campus. Bloom spoke to students at a Museums oped into a global phenomenon.Today program, led an exhibition viewing session This exhibition used the theme of Buddhism toattended by Five College faculty from a number of bring together various objects and artworks created indisciplines, and delivered a lecture, Arhats and the Asia or around the world, ranging from East Asian inkFigural Imagination of Chinese Buddhist Art. During paintings to Tibetan tangkas, from Indian sculpturesthe run of the exhibition, SCMA also co-sponsoreda lecture by Yukio Lippit, professor of history of artand architecture at Harvard University, titled Mokuans Four Sleepers: the Ultimate Zen Painting. The exhibition also benefited from advice from the Five College academic community. Christine I. Ho,associate professor of East Asian art at the Universityof Massachusetts Amherst, and her independent study student Levy Singleton (Smith 19), madeimportant contributions to its development.connecting people to artabove:Curator Yao Wu speaks to a group about Bodhidarma CrossingThis exhibition was supported by the Nolen Endowed Fund the Yangtze River on a Reed;right:Visitors in the Buddhas | Buddhismsfor Asian Art Initiatives.exhibition28'