White Ornaments and Colored Butter: The Fate of a Form of Tibetan Monumental Sculpture
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Many are familiar with Tibetan butter lamps, whose soft light brings out the golden faces of metal Buddhas and lamas from the darkness of a shrine. Less known, however, is the use of butter as a material for monumental sculpture as part of a long tradition in Tibet. Can these perishable images be displayed in museums, when their creation is linked to a precise context and their know-how is as admirable as it is little known?
