Himalayan Art Resources

HAR: Board of Directors Page

Introduction

Walter Arader (New York, California)
Walter Arader is a PhD student at the University of Oxford with a thesis concerning the "Dream Yogas" of Tibetan Buddhism. His thesis is lead by Dr. Ulrike Roesler, University Lecturer in Tibetan and Himalayan Studies, as well as by Jeff Watt (Wikipedia), Founding curator of the Rubin Museum of Art and director of Himalayan Art Resources. Apart from his academic pursuits, Walter organizes Asian Art fairs in New York city and actively supports scholarly and cultural institutions such as the Oxford Center for Buddhist Studies, Rangjung Yeshe Institute, and St. Cross College, Oxford. 2015.

Li Huang Wai (Beijing, China).
Li Huang Wai, a business man and industrialist, has long been interested in art focused on the Himalayan regions and Buddhist subjects, is the Founder of the Zhiguan Museum of Fine Art in Beijing, China. Modestly building a small collection over the years, the holdings now are considerably more extensive and boast some of the finest examples of their type, region and period for any museum of Himalayan style art. 2018.

Luo Wen Hua (Beijing, China). Curator of Tibetan Art, Palace Museum.
"Professor Luo Wenhua is a research fellow at the Palace Museum in Beijing and director of the Research Center for Tibetan Buddhist Heritage. His main area of research is in the art history of Tibetan Buddhism and the artistic relationship between China and Tibet. Since 1925, the Palace Museum has been in charge of the Forbidden City’s extensive collection of Ming- and Qing-era artifacts." (See a full interview at Buddhistdoor Global). 2018.

Michael McCormick - Chairman of the Board (New York)
Michael J. McCormick is a retired sea captain. He was Master on the M. V. President Jackson, a 970-foot container ship in the trans-Pacific trade. He is a graduate of the United States Merchant Marine Academy. He has served as a member of the Board of Directors of Tibet House since 1997 and also serves on the board of the Rubin Museum of Art (Wikipedia). He has travelled extensively in the Himalayas and Tibet while studying the historical aspects of Tibetan art. He has been a consultant for various Tibetan art exhibitions, including Sacred Visions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Divine Presence at La Caixa, Barcelona. He has a collection of eleventh to fifteenth century Tibetan paintings and generously shares it with the public through loans to exhibitions. 2015.

David Pritzker (Chicago)
David Pritzker has been associated with Himalayan Art Resources (www.himalayanart.org) since late spring of 2008. David was a curator at the Rubin Museum of Art (Wikipedia) where he organized and curated a number of shows including, Red Black and Gold (2008), From the Land of the Gods (2008), and BIG (2007). He received his Bachelor of Science degree from Stanford University with a major in history and a minor in international relations. Having grown up in Nepal, Mr. Pritzker has a particularly close relationship with the culture and art of the Himalayas. He spent much of his childhood exploring the Kathmandu Valley and the entire Himalayan range. Mr. Pritzker continues to visit Tibet in collaboration with China’s Cultural Bureau to conduct further research and exploration of early Tibetan Buddhist art history and archaeology. He is pursuing his PhD at Oxford University.

Matthieu Ricard (Kathmandu, Nepal)
Matthieu Ricard is a French Buddhist monk, photographer, author and famous lecturer, who resides at Shechen Tennyi Dargyeling Monastery in Nepal. Born in Aix-les-Bains, Savoie, France, he is the son of the late Jean-François Revel, a renowned French philosopher. Wikipedia. 2015.

Donald Rubin (New York)
Donald Rubin is the founder of MultiPlan, Inc., a major general service PPO health provider. He and his wife, Shelley Rubin, founded the Rubin Museum of Art (Wikipedia). Mr. Rubin serves as Co-founder and Co-chair of the Board of Trustees. The Rubins started collecting Himalayan art in the early 1980s and amassed a large and significant collection that became the core of the museum’s holdings. Mr. Rubin also developed the Himalayan Art Resources website to exhibit and catalog Himalayan and Tibetan art online from collections around the world. He initiated the Labor Arts Project website to gather, identify, and display examples of the cultural and artistic history of working people and to celebrate the trade union movement’s contributions to that history. Mr. Rubin is a member of the Global Philanthropists Circle. 2015.

James Shaheen (New York)
James Shaheen is the editor and publisher of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review (Wikipedia). He also serves as executive director for the Tricycle Foundation. A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, James has worked in the publishing field for the past three-and-a-half decades. Before joining Tricycle in 1996, James served on the editorial staff at Forbes magazine. 2015.

Jeff Watt (short bio)
Jeff Watt, one of the leading scholars of Himalayan art, acquired his prodigious knowledge of Buddhist, Bon and Hindu iconography from a longtime study of Buddhism and Tantra. During his tenure as the Founding and Senior Curator at the Rubin Museum of Art he built the collection from a personal founder driven collection into a world class museum collection with some of the finest examples of Himalayan Art comparable to the best museums anywhere. The Jourdan-Barry Collection was the single largest purchase (2005) with over 72 works of sculpture, many of which are on permanent display at the RMA. 2017.

May 21st 2015 [updated 3-2018]