Arts of the Indian Subcontinent and the Himalayas | Exhibitions | Freer and Sackler Galleries

February 1, 2012

Arts of the Indian Subcontinent and the Himalayas | Exhibitions | Freer and Sackler Galleries.

This was the exhibit I saw in the Freer Gallery on Saturday morning. These are two separate museums located adjacent to and behind “the Castle” of the Smithsonian Institution there on the Mall in DC. They have an overlapping focus. The Sackler collection is all East Asian art, and I believe that is a recently built museum located mostly below ground level. The Freer is a more established gallery that centers on Asian and American art.

The aesthetic of the Himalyan and Indian statues is easy to like. I’ll post a few nice examples here. I was not intending to get very involved with the arts in this work – particulalry as I am mostly rooted here in Vermont this semester - but these figures were very engaging and it would be nice to know how to read them at least a basic level. How are the various deities imaged? What are the various recurring symbols and poses? There are also some interesting techniques used to bring out certain concepts – for example, as one exhibit card points out, the way the lines of the draped garment in the one figure work to de-materialize the body beneath it.