Hevajra Mandala, 13th century, c. 1250, Western Tibet, Gift of Ruth and Bruce Dayton

Sonya Rhie Quintanilla ǀ Tantric Buddhist Art at the MIA: From India to Southeast Asia and Tibet

What is tantric Buddhism, and how did it spread across Asia? The MIA’s collection includes exceptional works of Buddhist art from the regions of India, Southeast Asia, and the Himalayas that document how tantric Buddhism spread north from India to Nepal and Tibet and east to Cambodia. Sonya Rhie Quintanilla, the George P. Bickford Curator of Indian and Southeast Asian Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art, will show how these two regions interpreted Indian esoteric Buddhism in widely divergent ways. She will also show art from neighboring regions where tantra was not as widely accepted to present a broad picture of how Buddhism took hold, developed, and flourished after its mysterious demise in India, the land of its birth, during the13th century.

Prior to joining the Cleveland Museum of Art in 2012, Sonya Rhie Quintanilla was curator of Asian art at the San Diego Museum of Art. A graduate of Smith College, she earned her PhD from Harvard University; her dissertation was published as History of Early Stone Sculpture at Mathura, c. 150 BCE–100 CE.

To register, call (612) 870-6323 or reserve online.

_{Hevajra Mandala, 13th century, c. 1250, Western Tibet, Gift of Ruth and Bruce Dayton}