Buddha Shakyamuni, Kandy period, 18th century, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, purchased with funds provided by Murray and Virginia Ward, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA;
LACMA presents ‘The Jeweled Isle: Art from Sri Lanka’ The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents ‘The Jeweled Isle: Art from Sri Lanka’, the first comprehensive survey of Sri Lankan art organized by a U.S. museum. December 9, 2018 – June 23, 2019.]]>
Source: The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
Drawn in part from LACMA’s collection of Sri Lankan art, and including numerous domestic and international loans, the exhibition presents some 250 works addressing nearly two millennia of Sri Lankan history. In 2009, Sri Lanka emerged from a nearly 30 yearlong civil war fought along ethnic and religious divides. The Jeweled Isle presents a timely exploration and celebration of a geographically complex, ethnically diverse, and multicultural South Asian hub.
The image of a bejeweled isle, invoked in ancient Sanskrit texts and in Greco-Roman accounts of Sri Lanka’s precious gems, inspired numerous literary descriptions of the island’s wealth and lush tropical beauty. The notion of “jewels” is apparent throughout the exhibition, which includes precious decorative objects fashioned from gold, silver, and ivory, and 19th-century photographs documenting Sri Lanka’s extraordinary monuments, people, landscapes, and flora.
Many of the photographs convey the importance of sacred sites and relics in Sri Lankan Buddhist practice, which are explored through the exhibition’s presentation of art associated with three of Sri Lanka’s historical capitals—Anuradhapura, Polonnaruva, and Kandy. While many religious sculptures, paintings, and architectural fragments from these sites variously express the so-called “jewels” of Buddhism, Hinduism was also an important part of the island’s cultural and religious fabric. The exhibition includes rare images of Hindu gods and Indian deities that attest to the long and constant interaction, in particular, between Sri Lanka and South India. Exquisite ivories, textiles, and furnishings further reflect nearly four centuries of European colonial presence in Sri Lanka and the dynamic interaction between local and foreign visual forms and traditions.
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