A gilded Tibetan Buddhist shrine room opens at Mia

On Saturday, the Minneapolis Institute of Art will open the Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room. According to Mia, the shrine is only the third of its kind in the U.S. and the only one outside of the East Coast.

At a preview event, Gelek Namgyal, the vice president of the Tibetan American Foundation of Minnesota, spoke about what this means for the local Tibetan community. According to the foundation, Minnesota has the second largest Tibetan population in the country after Queens, N.Y., with an estimated 5,000 Tibetans living in the state.

“This is a great opportunity for everyone, regardless of cultural and religious background, to be able to explore Tibet culture, religion and Tibetan arts, which basically emphasizes love and compassion,” Namgyal said. 

“I’m also sure that this platform is greatly needed for Minnesota communities, particularly for we Tibetans, so younger generations will be able to visit the museum to explore and educate themselves about our arts, culture, tradition."

The space, about the size of a large bedroom, showcases more than 240 Buddhist ritual objects from Tibet dating from the 1300s to the early 1900s. It feels like the inside of a jewel box swirling with a soft incense.

In flickering candlelight, gilded sculptures sparkle and gem-colored silk hangings and intricate carpets tell stories through illustrations. The room hums with Buddhist chanting — the Gyuto Monks Tantric Choir from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.

This shrine used to be in a private home in New York, that of photographer, child psychologist and author Alice S. Kandell, who gifted her collection to Mia. Kandell is a leading collector in the U.S. of Tibetan Buddhist art and sacred objects. In 2010, she made a similar gift to the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, D.C.

At the Mia preview, Kandell told her story, of how a lifelong practice of collecting began with a 1960s trip to Sikkim, a northern state of India that borders the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. 

“When I got there, I was overwhelmed by the beauty of everything — the air, the mountains, the Himalayas,” Kandell said. “These are not art. These pieces — they are objects of religious iconography.”

In the aughts, Kandell said she wondered if objects in her collection could have been looted in the aftermath of China’s 1951 annexation of Tibet. So, she reached out to the Dalai Lama. 

The Dalai Lama wrote a letter, Kandell said, and eventually a preface for the book “A Shrine for Tibet: The Alice S. Kandell Collection.”

“He said, ‘The events of 50 years ago have caused much of the Tibetan cultural heritage to be destroyed in its own land. Therefore I am very happy to know that some of our sacred images have survived and are being treated with appropriate respect everywhere,’” Kandell read. 

Mia deputy director and chief curator Matthew Welch helped acquire the collection after meeting Kandell at the opening of the shrine room at the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art. 

Welch said that while Mia’s Asian collections are known for Japanese and Chinese objects, Kandell’s gift will make the museum a leader in Tibetan objects.

“Most collectors are interested in something like this or something like that, but rare is the collector who is interested in all of it, and part of that is because of her own unique personal experience,” Welch said. “She’s brought it all together — textiles, carpets, sculptural images, religious paintings, ritual implements — into a context that help us understand the complexity and richness of Tibetan artistic expression.”

“She has made this significant donation to Minneapolis, to Mia, to all of us to have a chance for us to really dive more deeply into Tibetan art here,” said Katie Luber, Mia’s director.

The shrine room is a permanent exhibition. Mia is hosting an opening festival Sept. 14 with a performance by student dancers from the Tibetan American Foundation of Minnesota and a lecture by Tibetan Buddhist scholar and former monk Thupten Jinpa Langri, who has been an English translator for the Dalai Lama since the ‘80s.

There will also be a consecration of a sand mandala created over the past week by visiting nuns from the Jangchub Choeling Nunnery of India. The following weekend, as is tradition, the mandala will be dismantled and the sands poured into the Mississippi River.

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