The Perfect Circle art- Mandala- exhibition

"Mandala: The Perfect Circle - Buddhist Cosmic Diagrams Come to Life"
2009-08-20 until 2010-01-11
Rubin Museum of Art
New York, NY, USA United States of America

Mandala: The Perfect Circle takes visitors from the 8th to the 21st century, displaying some of the oldest known mandalas in the world, large paintings found in the Dunhuang caves in northwestern China, alongside virtual, computer-generated varieties created by designers at Cornell University and Zurich University. On rare loan from the Musee Guimet in Paris, an early Dunhuang mandala masterfully depicts a crowded pantheon of deities, each situated symmetrically in its proper symbolic place. The virtual mandalas will provide an explosion of intense digital color in rare three-dimensional views of a mandala�s creation and final form.�

The exhibition is the first of three in The Cosmologies Series,�the museum�s ten-month-long investigation of how different cultures have visually represented the universe, from the solar system to the self.�

The Rubin Museum of Art (RMA) houses an esteemed and wide-ranging collection of Himalayan art; the paintings, pictorial textiles, and sculptures are drawn from cultures that touch upon the 1,800 mile arc of mountains that extends from Afghanistan in the northwest to Myanmar (Burma) in the southeast and includes Tibet, Nepal, Mongolia, and Bhutan. With changing exhibitions and exciting events, RMA allows people of all ages and backgrounds to discover art from the far-away Himalayas conveniently in Chelsea.