With polished, ruddy hues and two piercing, wide eyes, the sculptural pipe known to archaeologists as “Big Boy” commands attention. Excavated from a mortuary context at the site of Spiro […]
Nikorima by Isaiah Karaitiana
Masterfully combining studded textures with smooth surfaces and warm wood with glistening inlays, the works of Nikorima, by artist Isaiah Karaitiana, seem to move organically under the shifting natural light. […]
In Conversation: Hsu Yung-hsu, 2019-13
Victoria Lee is a ceramicist and sculptor from Taiwan. For Convergence, she converses with Xiaohan Du, a postdoctoral fellow in the Asian art department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art […]
This Is Not a Sculpture: Displaying Indian Religious Figures in Museums
The collection of medieval Indian works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York includes a captivating figure of a celestial dancer, or devata, who seems entirely freed from […]
White Ornaments and Colored Butter: The Fate of a Form of Tibetan Monumental Sculpture
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?
From museum to the field: the temples of Āśāpurī, India
Āśāpurī, an early medieval site (9th-11th century) in Central India, only came to the attention of archaeologists decades after museum specialists first collected and preserved its sculptures. Despite the major role of local and state museums in the preservation of the site, looters keep plundering Āśāpurī’s most valued artworks.
English 
Français