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How the museum and the Indian overcame 8 years of physically and diplomatic demands to bring 125 rare Buddhist artworks to New York.
By Rachel Sherman
Who weighs over 4,000 pounds, lives on a remote island, and can only travel by boat during India’s dry seasons?Answer: Five ancient limestone sculptures that were going to arrive in New York City in one form or another: via a box, a pontoon barge, a ferry on the Krishna River, and a truck to an airport in Hyderabad.
Now believe in the logistics involved in shipping around 120 other rare Buddhist artifacts, dozens of which had never left India and many with their own obstacles, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and get a sense of the demanding situations curators face. exhibition: « Tree
Spoiler: all the pieces have arrived at the Met, where the stone sculptures shine like candles in contrast to the dark charcoal walls of the galleries. designed to motivate rumination and Buddha’s undeniable message: compassion.
Obtaining loans from five countries for devout relics dating back to the fifth century BC. C. Se requires diplomatic finesse, premonitory workarounds, and a lot of paperwork. ” and crossing the “T”.
“This is the largest assemblage of Indian antiquities that has occurred in more than a generation,” said John Guy, curator of South and Southeast Asian art at the Met, who began making plans for the exhibition, backed by decades of studies, 8 years ago. “Obviously, we feel incredibly privileged. “
“Four flights came to the J. F. K. with a lot of sculptures,” Guy said. That’s 36,737 pounds, or 18. 37 Array to be exact.
The exhibition relied on the generosity of moneylenders in India, Italy, the United States, England, and Germany, and the preparatory paintings included years of on-site visits to build relationships and accept them as true. In India alone, negotiations have included the central government. , the Ministry of Culture, the Archaeological Survey of India, the National Museum and the governments of six states. During the discussions, input was solicited from 3 U. S. ambassadors. Two Indian ambassadors to the U. S. U. S.
International relations of obtaining loans from foreign governments is a delicate process. In 1996, just weeks before the Met’s “Splendours of Imperial China” show, demonstrators protested outdoors at the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan, not easy for the museum to retain artworks destined for New York. In the end, Taiwanese government officials got rid of 23 works.
Few borrowings from this Met exhibit, which come with intricate carvings of princely headdresses, burning pillars, and scenes of ecstatic devotion, have been seen outside of India, and of those that have traveled, most have not been exhibited for a generation or more. Much of the exhibits include stupas, the monumental devout domes that housed Buddha’s remains after cremation, as well as other non-secular materials.
Negotiating loans for antiquities is also more complicated, as the Met and other museums grapple with the history of artifacts they already hold. Many countries are more aggressively pursuing the repatriation of artifacts, and last year investigators in New York seized looted artifacts valued at more than $13 million. of the museum. The Met has recently announced plans to rent a provenance study team and read about its possessions.
The Buddhist exhibition was intended to open in November 2020, but the coronavirus pandemic delayed it, and when the Met made plans again in 2022, many other people involved in past discussions were replaced by new gatekeepers. “I pedal a lot to catch up,” Guy said.
Although the exhibition was intended to take a stand 3 years ago, its opening is now related to the 75th anniversary of India’s independence from the British Empire at a birthday party of the country’s democracy.
At the same time, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government are under scrutiny for discrimination against minority groups, adding to the accusations that have fueled and turned a blind eye to violence against Muslims. (At a press opening of the exhibition, one of the visiting Indian dignitaries, Dr. Hari Krishna, representative of the leading minister of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, spoke about the Buddhist price of nonviolence, but faced recent events in his country. )
“This is evidently a birthday party of any specific government,” Max Hollein, the museum’s director and chief executive, said in an interview. “It’s a birthday party of Indian culture. “
The museum emits the message of the meditative reflected image as the center of the exhibition “Tree”.
“For us, it’s an exhibition that celebrates Buddha’s teachings and compassion for living things, caring about the environment, the kind of key tenets of Buddhism,” Guy said. “And yes, it exists in a more political context, of course, and like all countries it’s complicated, however, for us it’s a very special time to celebrate a wonderful artistic culture and honor a wonderful religion. “
Perhaps the greatest confusion of the journeys made through the infrequent artifacts is that of the five limestone carvings and stupa panels that were to cross the Krishna River. The third-century collection from the island of Nagarjunakonda, in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, is the subject of two years of negotiation.
The individual pieces were bulky (one panel is over six feet tall and over eight feet long) and once they reached the mainland, they had to be trucked to Hyderabad airport to fly to New Delhi and then New York.
The other wild card? The weather. The local archaeological museum where they were located closes its doors to the public during the monsoon season, when it is considered harmful to cross the torrential waters and the ferry service stops working. In a fight against time, the wonderful transit of antiquities took position. in June, just before the situations have turned rainy and windy in July.
Two of the artifacts — crossbeams of a ceremonial walkway carved with scenes from Buddha’s life — had never before been on public display, Guy said, even in India. They were excavated at the site of the hilltop Buddhist monastery, Phanigiri, in 2002 and then moved to the village at the back of the hill and locked in a warehouse.
There, the care of the arches fell to a single person: a high-level member of the village network in terms of key protection. For two decades, Guy has kept an eye on ancient artifacts, opening them only to researchers with formal permission from the state branch of archaeology. and accompanied through a member.
Permission to take the crossbars to the Met required several years of discussions with the state Ministry of Culture, the Department of Archaeology, a village leader and a local MP. Finally, the loan was secured.
“It took a lot of thought, a lot of discussions,” Guy said.
Every time ivory crosses borders, it’s complicated. The move requires a series of licenses, adding a consistent foreign permit issued as part of an agreement between more than a hundred countries that enforces industry regulations for endangered species. Then there are individual imports and export permits in accordance with the country and required letters of conformity required by educational authorities.
Displaying a 10-inch-tall ivory statuette of an Indian yakshi, a strangely feminine nature spirit discovered in 1938 at an excavation in Pompeii, required 18 months of paperwork. It was a remnant of land and sea industry between the Indian and Roman subcontinents. Empire in the first century AD, in which Indian exports included sesame oil, spices and ivory. The yakshi is the only Indian object recovered from the ancient city.
In the first of the jewel-adorned statuettes outside Italy since its excavation, the sculpture, with the appropriate entrances, was flown from the National Archaeological Museum in Naples to the Met. It is on display along with another item from the luxury industry. , is a bronze statuette of Poseidon whose origins were Roman but which was excavated in the Indian state of Maharashtra in 1944.
“Together, those two little items include the whole history of Indo-Roman trade,” Guy said.
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