Detail: Masterworks: Jewels of the Collection displays some of the museum's most stunning works of art. The stylistic diversity and relationships between various strands of Himalayan and neighboring cultural and artistic traditions are represented by important works of art spanning a period of over one thousand years. In addition to a wide range of Buddhist and Hindu deities rendered in all major media, Masterworks also highlights the museum's most notable recent acquisitions, all of which have rarely or never been exhibited.
Life-size facsimiles of an entire sequence of murals from the Lukhang, the Dalai Lamas' Secret Temple near the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet, provide an exceptional opportunity for viewing Himalayan art at its most lavish. The original eighteenth-century wall paintings--inaccessible to the public until the late twentieth century--uniquely depict the most esoteric of meditation and yoga practices in vivid color and detail. Created with new photographic methods by Thomas Laird and Clint Clemens, this display of large-format, high resolution pigment prints allows for even better access to the paintings than is possible in the temple itself. Their presentation at the Rubin marks the first showing in the world of prints created using this technology and also provides the first-ever opportunity outside Tibet to view full-size Tibetan murals in their relationship to portable art from the region.