Description of the attraction
The Rubin Art Museum is relatively new (it was opened in 2004), but already the largest and most significant museum in the United States, completely dedicated to the art of the Himalayas and surrounding areas, mainly Tibet.
One evening in 1998, businessman Donald Rubin was stuck in a New York traffic jam. His taxi was parked on 17th Street, opposite the dark, empty building of Barney's former department store (two years earlier, the company that owned a chain of luxury department stores had gone bankrupt). It instantly dawned on Rubin - he decided to buy the building and turn it into a new museum. What the museum should be about, Rubin had no doubt - he and his wife Shelley had been collecting Himalayan art since 1974. Then they were not yet rich or art lovers, and they would hardly have found the Himalayas on the map. Rubies accidentally saw a painting depicting White Tara (Buddha in female form) in a gallery on Madison Avenue. This first purchase was the beginning of their lifelong passion.
The department store building was remodeled for the museum by the heritage conservation firm Blair Blinder Bell. Although the façade was stylized in a Buddhist spirit, many of the interior details have survived - in particular, the original six-story spiral staircase made of marble and steel by interior designer André Putman. Once this staircase led to the section where the $ 35,000 dresses were hanging, but now it has become the center of the 2300 square meters exhibition space.
The opening of the museum was lavish and was accompanied by the launch of kites and a parade of Himalayan dogs. Now about 2 thousand exhibits are exhibited here - painting, sculpture, textiles, as well as ritual objects from the 2nd to the 20th centuries. All this was collected in an area that includes Tibet, Nepal, Mongolia and Bhutan.
Visitors get acquainted with the main styles of Buddhist art, with special materials and technologies - for example, paintings on religious themes (thangka) are painted with glue paints on fabric. Himalayan tankas are very spectacular, sometimes frightening - you can see deities with nightmarish fangs, removed elephant skins, necklaces of skulls or severed heads, mules with eyes on their sides, all this is usually in bright colors. For a connoisseur, every detail of the tank speaks volumes, there is not a single random element in the paintings. An ordinary tourist will probably come up with an idea: how strange that all these images, intended for meditation, were kept in silence among the mountains for thousands of years, and now are exhibited in seething New York.
You will be able to get away from philosophical reflections in the museum cafe "K2" (this is one of the names of Chogori, the second highest mountain peak in the world) - dishes with a hint of Himalayan cuisine and exotic desserts will be served there.
