News

An outline page has been created in the process of organizing the various sets of paintings that depict the Shambhala Kings. It soon became clear from the amount of art and number of different sets that there needed to be more than one Outline Page to fully contextualize the material. In general there are two different systems for depicting the Seven Kings and Twenty-five Vidyadharas: Royal Appearance and Deity Appearance. The Royal Appearance system is older and found throughout Tibet and the Himalayan regions. The Deity Appearance was popularized in the Kham region of East Tibet by Katog Tsewang Norbu in the 18th century. It is possible that the Deity Appearance system originates from an earlier Jonang textual tradition. Further research is required.

Shambhala Kings Outline Page
Shambhala Kings: Royal Appearance Outline Page
Shambhala Kings: Deity Appearance Outline Page

Google Alert: "Himalayan Art Resources"

In the twelve year history of the HAR website there have been four major additions, or changes, to the site that have improved it tremendously; a quantum leap forward in how the site is used. The first (1) was the extensive use of Thematic Sets, the grouping of related thumbnail images into various sets. Currently there are over two thousand Thematic Sets. The second (2) great improvement was the addition of extensive Outline Pages to contextualize the subjects and topics of Himalayan art. Currently there are approximately three hundred Outline Pages. The third (3) great improvement was the addition of the Google Search which has revolutionized navigation on the site and made everything easier to find and faster. The fourth (4) great innovation on the site is the addition of Visual Images of Sets to represent the full and complete composition of an art work, whenever it is known. More than half of all Himalayan and Tibetan art was created in sets of paintings and sculpture.

See examples of sets of paintings both complete and incomplete:
Eight Mahasiddhas Set (Palpung)
Eight Bodhisattvas Set (Palpung)
Eighty-four Mahasiddhas (Jonang)
Eighty-four Mahasiddhas Set
Jataka Painting Set
Panchen Lama Incarnation Set

Images of paintings and sculpture from the gallery floors of the Guimet Museum in Paris have been added to the HAR site. The images are snap shots and of a poor quality for the most part, but it is better to have a bad image than no image at all. The Guimet has one of the finest collections of Himalayan art in Europe, if not all of the Western world.

Over the last month or so we have been having intermittent problems with the HAR image server. This is the software that creates the thumbnail images and allows for zooming and enlarging of those images. We believe that the problems have been identified and fixed for now. New monitoring software has been installed that will keep better track of all aspects of the HAR website. The software will automatically inform us when there are server shut downs and user requests that are not completed. At this time we are also changing and upgrading certain parts of the database architecture so as to improve the functionality of the site. For now most of these changes won't be seen by the users and mostly have to do with how information is accessed by the database. The changes will also allow the HAR team to catalogue large numbers of images more efficiently and most importantly - quickly.

Several of the Lhasa cityscape paintings have been converted to greyscale and numbers have been added to the images identifying the important architectural structures, monasteries and temples.

Additional detail images have been added to the monumental Mongolian painting of Lhasa. New images have been added to the Tashi Lhunpo, Shigatse set along with two early 20th century drawings by European travelers or British surveyors.

The Avalokiteshvara Outline has been updated and expanded to include an Art Topics and Eleven Faced Outline. Many new sub sets have been added along with new images.

Avalokiteshvara Outline
Avalokiteshvara Art Topics
Avalokiteshvara Eleven Faces

Outline Pages:
Art Subjects Outline Page (updated)
Padmasambhava Outline (updated)
Padmasambhava: Eight Forms
Padmasambhava: Meditational Forms
Ritual Objects (updated)
Parnashavari: Forest Goddess
Initiation Cards

Image Sets:
Padmasambhava: Eight Forms (Sculpture)
Padmasambhava: Medicine Buddha Form
Buddhist Worldly Protector: Rahula, Retinue Figure
Buddhist Worldly Protector: Ta'og Sengshon
Subject: Samye Monastery Paintings
Charts: Poetry & Calligraphy
Teacher: Do Kyentse Yeshe Dorje
Subject: Cityscapes, Unidentified
Initiation Cards: Rinchen Terdzo Volume NGA
Initiation Cards: Rinchen Terdzo Volume NYA
Initiation Cards: Bodong Sengdong (Simhamukha)
Initiation Cards: Jatson Sengdong (Simhamukha)
Initiation Cards: Chogling Choto Dregpa
Initiation Cards: Longsal Sengmar (Simhamukha)
Initiation Cards: Tagsham Sengmar (Simhamukha)
Initiation Cards: Nyangter Choto Dregpa
Initiation Cards: Rinchen Terdzo Master List
Initiation Cards: Peling
Buddhist Deity: Parnashavari (Yellow, Three Faces)
Buddhist Deity: Parnashavari (Blue, Four Hands)
Buddhist Deity: Parnashavari (Green, Two Hands)
Buddhist Deity: Parnashavari (Sculpture)
Ritual Object: Long Life Vase

Longchen Nyingtig Treasure Tradition Outline Page:
Images and art associated with the Longchen Nyingtig Treasure Tradition of Jigme Lingpa have been organized into a simple outline page. Many new image sets were created and a number of previously uncatalogued images have been identified during this quick study.


Cityscape & Monastery Paintings Outline Page:
More and more cityscape paintings are turning up in museum and private collections. They are interesting and maybe even fascinating. Some are more accurate than others and at least one appears to be painted from a photograph. Many are easily identified as Lhasa, Tashi Lhunpo or Samye Monastery. A few of them remain unidentified.

Hell, Subjects and Depictions:
Hell
Hell Beings Set I
Hell Beings Miscellaneous
Wheel of Life: Bon Religion
Six Buddhas of the Six Realms
Padmasambhava: Six Realms (Peling)

Miscellaneous Subjects:
Vajrabhairava Retinue Figure
Bookcovers, Ranjana/Lantsha Script
Manuscripts, Title Page
Bon Protector: Dragpa Sengge
Vajrapani, Sculpture
Stupa: Dhanyakataka

Nyingma Painting and Initiation Card Sets:
Padmasambhava: Vaishravana Form
Twenty-one Taras of the Chogyur Lingpa Tradition, Initiation Cards
Ngar Pan Yontan Terdzo Initiation Cards
Padmasambhava: Ngar Pan Yontan Terdzo Paintings
Padmasambhava: Terma Forms & Transference Paintings
Longchen Nyingtig Painting Set
Longchen Nyingtig Field of Accumulation Paintings
Yutog Nyingtig Initiation Cards(Set II)
Karling Shitro Initiation Cards
Deling Shitro Initiation Cards
Shigling Zab Dun Initiation Cards
Lama Gongdu Initiation Cards
Jangter Tugdrub Kagye Initiation Cards
Miscellaneous Initiation Cards (Rinchen Ter Dzo, Vol TSA)

A HELL Outline Page has been added to the site. It is a work in progress with more images and image sets to be linked. With luck those images will be uploaded tomorrow and more content and context added over the weekend.

The Initiation Card Sets page has been updated and doubled in size. There are now 35 sets of both Bon and Buddhist initiation cards with the latter being in the majority. The bulk of the sets are drawn from the Rinchen Ter Dzo collection of Revealed Treasure teachings of the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. More sets will be added over the next few months.

The lists for both the European museums and the Asian museums have been updated. There are still many more to add and some have been listed without proper links. If you can think of any that we have missed then please e-mail us and let us know so that we can add them. For Mongolia only the main museums have been added. There are, possibly, twenty-three provinces and each has a provincial museum. India has many more museums with collections of Himalayan art than what we have listed. Documenting all of the Himalayan art in the world that resides in museum collections is an enormous and ongoing project.

So far, in the United States, there are sixty-two (62) museums in twenty-one (21) states that have been identified as having collections of Himalayan & Tibetan style art. It is very likely that there are a number of other museums out there not yet identified. Twenty (20) of these museums with images from their collections are currently represented on the Himalayan Art Resources (HAR) website. The HAR staff are continuing to contact and work with other museums in the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia, to encourage their participation in this global cultural endeavor.

Google Alert: "Himalayan Art Resources"

The Newsletter is out and can be found on the Home Page under New On the Site.

As of February 2009 the HAR staff have installed new office computers and a new fully raided storage and back-up system for all in-house work. The storage and back-up system has been a long time coming. It is finally here and a welcomed improvement. The website itself has always been fully backed up by our internet service provider.

Since October of 2008 until now 48 Blog entries have been added to the site; announcing new additions, features, collections, exhibitions and links. Whenever new information or content is uploaded to the blog it is also added to the HAR database as a backup pre-caution. The Testimonial Page is growing slowly and on February 3rd, 2009, a second call for testimonials was sent out to all academics, scholars and educators who use the site. Please send testimonials to info@himalayanart.org. We are especially interested to hear from those educators that use the site in classroom settings.

Google Alert: "Himalayan Art Resources"

To receive e-mail updates for all postings to the HAR Blog - sign up for Google Alerts and enter "Himalayan Art Resources" with quotation marks. We have tested this and it works although it sometimes takes up to five days for the Google bots to re-visit blog sites.

Patron and Painter
Rubin Museum of Art, New York
February 6, 2009 - August 17, 2009

Much like religious princes, the Karmapas, heads of the Karma Kagyu, one of Tibet's principal schools of Buddhism, traveled for centuries in large monastic tent encampments. These courts, which included portable temples, a community of monks, and skilled artists and artisans, produced their own distinctive painting style, known as the "Encampment style" (Gardri). The painter Namkha Tashi founded the style in the court of the Ninth Karmapa (1555-1603) in Central Tibet. He looked to Indian figural models and placed them in landscapes inspired heavily by the works of Chinese court painters.

Most of what we know of this painting tradition belongs to its eighteenth-century revival fostered by the great scholar-painter Situ Panchen (1700-1774) in Kham Province, Eastern Tibet, with its new artistic center at his monastic seat, Palpung. Even more important to the history of Tibetan art than Situ Panchen's role as a painter is his role as a patron and designer of paintings, many of which continue to be copied to this day. For the first time anywhere, this exhibition traces the career and artistic legacy of one of the great patrons and artists in Tibetan history. (From the RMA website).

Google Alert: "Himalayan Art Resources"

Stable as a Mountain
Rubin Museum of Art, New York
March 13, 2009 - July 13, 2009

Portraiture is one of the most powerful and significant expressions of figurative art, and in the Himalayas the subjects of religious portraits are exclusively religious teachers, or gurus. By preserving the physical appearance of a guru, an icon is produced that can charismatically substitute for the teacher in his physical absence. As such these portraits often embody the teachings of the guru and the traits of the enlightened mind. (From RMA website).

Google Alert: "Himalayan Art Resources"

Toward Enlightenment: The Sacred Art of Tibet & Universe of a Deity: A Tibetan Sand Mandala
University Art Museum, UC Santa Barbara
April 1, 2009 â?? June 14, 2009

In conjunction with the historic fourth visit to UC Santa Barbara by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama in April, the University Art Museum announces an exclusive presentation of historic and living art of the Himalayas. Toward Enlightenment: The Sacred Art of Tibet prime examples of Tibetan paintings from the 14th to 19th centuries. The exhibition highlights the multi-level functioning of the art and its themes of transformation of the profound into the worldly with a strong emphasis on depictions of teaching. These paintings echo the purity and precision of visionary buddhas, bodhisattvas, archetypal deities, lama portraits, and protectors. (From UAM UCSB website).

Google Alert: "Himalayan Art Resources"

The Creatures of the Rain Rivers, Cloud Lakes: Newars Saw Them, So Did Ancient India, by Gautama V. Vajracharya.

"The magnificent works of the Newar artists and architects of the Kathmandu valley include not only paintings, sculptures, residential houses, public building and royal palaces but also water fountains comfortably positioned in public places near the residential area or inside the palaces."

Google Alert: "Himalayan Art Resources"

Marvels of the Malla Period: A Nepalese Renaissance 1200-1603.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art.
December 22, 2007 â?? June 1, 2008.

In this exhibition, the Philadelphia Museum presents masterpieces from its own outstanding collection of rarely seen Malla Period art. Vibrant Buddhist ritual paintings burst with energy, a marvelous goddess coyly dances, and golden Hindu and Buddhist sculptures regally invite adoration. From INTRODUCTION.

Google Alert: "Himalayan Art Resources"