SCHOLARSHIP

"Provenance & Himalayan Art", for Himalayan Art Resources, March 2024

Excerpt:
"The three objects currently included in this set have been repatriated by the Rubin Museum of Art to Nepal. The Bhairava mask which is a large ritual object created for communal use during the Indrajatra festival (wherein the mask's open mouth is linked to an earthen pot filled with rice beer and Newar devotees drink from its mouth as a blessing from their ancestor god Hatha Dya, with whom Bhairava is closely associated) was reported to have been stolen on the 8th of March 1995. The two apsara reliefs in wood were architectural elements that appeared in in-situ photographs published in Mary Slusser's two volume series "Nepal Mandala: A Cultural Study of the Kathmandu Valley" Vol. 1-2. Princeton University Press, 1982. As both dates of removal from Nepal precede the 1972 UNESCO agreement and the Nepalese patrimony law of 1956 they are considered illegally removed from their country of origin. See the Rubin Museum of Art's statement on the Bhairava mask here: "Bhairava Press Release"..."

Read the whole article here.

EXHIBITIONS:

Buddha, Sage of the Shakya Clan: Masterworks from
the Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection

CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS:

[Abstract:] Since the 1990’s, an ever-growing corpus of metal statues has been identified as of Khaśa Malla origin and a “new” style of Himalayan art thus branded. The term Khaśa Malla refers to a trans-Himalayan empire known from Tibetan historical sources as Yatse (Tib. ya rtse). Between the twelfth and the fourteenth century, this relatively overlooked polity held sway over central and western Nepal, and probably parts of Uttarakhand and south-western Tibet. The seat of their power is usually located in the Karnali basin of west Nepal, in Dullu (Dailekh district) and in Sinja (Jumla district). The latter had been broadly recognized as the Tibetan kingdom of Yatse. The Khaśa Malla emperors supported Buddhist institutions from Tibet to Bodhgaya, and frequently visited the Kathmandu valley, be it for religious purposes, or for plunder. Their names also appear in inscriptions as patrons of Hinduism. Authors have perceived these patronages in very different ways: while some have ignored or minimized the Hindu or the Buddhist affiliation of the Khaśa Mallas, others have considered it as a sign of the ruler’s religious pluralism. The archaeological landscape of west Nepal, at the heart of the Khaśa Malla polity, reveals a unique cultural heritage, spanning from the twelfth to the seventeenth century. Latina temples (also called śikhara or deval), stone memorial pillars, water reservoirs, fountains, stūpas and, very occasionally, stone sculptures, show a great variety of styles. Monuments and artifacts testify the passage or the influence of artists from north and north-western India, mainly from Rajasthan-Gujarat and from nearby Uttarakhand. Stone statues were also imported directly from these regions. In this context, the identification of a Khaśa Malla style of metal statuary, deserves close attention. As our presentation will show, the metal sculptures considered so far are largely taken out of context; chiefly, the style of the statuary is not contextualized with contemporary creations from west Nepal and their provenances remain unknown (a very few exceptions from Dolpo can be mentioned). Moreover, a foundational premise for attributing these metal sculptures to the Karnali Basin has been the presence of a “proto-Nepali” or “Devanāgarī” script utilized in inscribing the names of royal patrons on select examples from this milieu. We will demonstrate that this premise is unreliable. Thus, the aim of our presentation is to propose a general reassessment of the Khaśa Malla metal statuary, based on an archaeological field investigation; what we know.