The exhibit, The Buddhist Heritage of Pakistan: Art of Gandhara, (the border between ancient Pakistan and Afghanistan), has just opened at the Asia Society, and will be up through October 30, 2011.
Many consider the exhibit a place of wonder. The statuettes and friezes of Buddha and other figures inside and outside of the Buddhist canon are on loan to the Asia Society from the National Museum in Karachi, the Central Museum in Lahore, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Asia Society Museum, and private collections. Most of these pieces have never been exhibited before in the United States.
The traditional images of the Buddha are accompanied by many figures and styles and influences, not all religious, which may be new to Western viewers.
Expect to see an unexpected artistic synthesis of East and West, Indian and Pakistani, Greek and Roman, of Buddhism and of Greco Roman religious syncretism....
Continue reading at Journal of Foreign Relations.
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