Detail: This exhibition organized by Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery of Columbia University highlights one of the notable collections of Chinese stone sculpture in the US. The 21 sculptures -steles, full figures and heads of divinities, as well as funerary objects - provide a comprehensive view of how art manifests ritual practice and reveals, through iconography, the transmission and transformation of culture from the Han through the Tang Dynasty. Eighteen of the works are Buddhist and some have been ascribed for the first time to specific Buddhist sites. As tangible cultural artefacts, physical remains of history, the objects in the exhibition are crystallized manifestations of the imperial authority, religious fervor, and aesthetic ideas developed in one of China's most vibrant historical periods.