Exhibition Review: Buddhist Sculpture from China: Selections from the Xi'an Beilin Museum, Fifth through Ninth Centuries, China Institute Gallery, New York City (2007)

Abstract

Sculpture from China: Selections from the Xi'an Beilin Museum, Fifth through Ninth was presented at the Institute Gallery, directed by Willow Weilan Hai Chang, from 20 September through 8 December 2007. The guest curator was the well-respected scholar Annette L. Juliano, whose previous exhibitions include Monks and Merchants: Silk Road Treasures from Northwest China, Gansu and Ningxia, 4th~7th Century, undertaken with Dr. Judith A. Lerner in 2002 for The Asia Society, New York, and the path-breaking Art of the Six Dynasties: Centuries of Change and Innovation, held at Institute in 1975Buddhist Sculpture from China tapped into one of the great collections of China's Northwest. The Beilin (Forest of Steles) Museum is a rich depository of sculpture executed in Xi'an and the surrounding area. Originally the museum's prominence was based on its astounding collection of steles, but over the last fifty years it has also become the custodian of a body of Buddhist stone sculpture excavated in Shaanxi Province that represents the northwestern school of carving through successive periods of history from the Northern Wei (386-534) forward, with particular emphasis on the Northern Zhou (557-581) and Tang (618-907) periods. One cannot but appreciate the administrative difficulties of arranging this exhibition, the huge bureaucratic and logistical hurdles that must have been surmounted in order to bring more than seventy stone and clay objects from the interior of to New York City. Juliano is the primary author of the attractive scholarly Catalogue, which includes contributions by Zhao Liguang (Director of the Beilin Museum), Stanley K. Abe, Susan L. Beningson, Selena Shen Wang, Eugene Y. Wang, Dorothy C. Wong, and Xiuqin Zhou, as well as excellent photography. The exhibition was further accompanied by a symposium Art and Practice: Buddhism in from the 5th~9th organized by Juliano and France Pepper, Director of Arts and Culture Programs. This outstanding interdisciplinary program, held on 17 October 2007, brought together historians of religion with art historians to constructive effect.