Press Releases August 4, 2008

The William Benton Museum Fall Season Opens With Sheila Rock’s Stunning Photographs of Tibetan Monks and The 43rd Annual Art Department Faculty Exhibition

July 31, 2008, Storrs, CT -- The William Benton Museum of Art opens its Fall season with Sera: The Way of the Tibetan Monk, The Photographs of Sheila Rock and The 43rd Annual Art Department Faculty Exhibition. A reception honoring Ms. Rock and the faculty artists will be Thursday, September 4, 5-7:30 pm. The public is invited.

Sheila Rock’s Sera: The Way of the Tibetan Monk is only occasionally a photographic document of the daily life of the Tibetan monks of the Sera Monastery at Bylakuppe in southern India’s Mysore district. Rather, it is an extended visual essay on a state of mind, with portraits of teenagers, children and elders who share a common social and philosophical framework in Tibetan Buddhism.

In 1998, fashion and portrait photographer Sheila Rock visited Sera Monastery and was struck by the quietude and serenity of both the place and the individuals. The following year, with the abbot’s permission, she returned to photograph the monks and novices, individually and in groups. She frequently used a plain backdrop, which visually removed the figure from the context of the monastery and focused attention intensely on the subject. Many of these portrait studies appear to reveal the individual’s inner personality, yet because of the language barrier, Ms. Rock “felt that [she] was working completely visually.”

Ms. Rock also photographed the monks in their rooms, at work, at prayer, at play, and gathered at ceremonies. These photographs, with their discursive subjects and more complex backgrounds, are artistically different from the individual portraits. However, they still share one quality that is expressive of the personality of the monks individually and collectively: They each share a mutual joy for one another’s company and for the life that has been chosen for them. Individual serenity is only implied in the larger numbers presented in these images, but the collective satisfaction of the monks with their monastic lives is complete. Ms. Rock’s images speak clearly of a Buddhist adherence to a life of meditation and learning and the quest to overcome humanity’s strife, anxiety, and venality. Artistically, she has created works that are inspired and inspiring.

This exhibitions opens August 26 and runs through December 19. A catalog, Sera: The Way of the Tibetan Monk (Columbia University Press, New York, 2003) will be available for purchase in The Store at the Benton.

The 43rd Annual Art Department Faculty Exhibition of painting, sculpture, illustration, graphic design, printmaking, photography and installation art will be on view September 2 - October 12. While much has changed in the art world since the first exhibition in 1967, the technical excellence, modernity and artistic quality of the works remain consistently engaging. The exhibition represents the diversity of themes and styles of the modern art world while highlighting the singularity of the artists’ visions. This year’s featured artists, both of whom work on a large scale, are Professors Deborah (Muirhead) Dancy and Ray DiCapua.

Bound by Tradition and Religion: An Exhibition of Tibetan Tangkas will serve as a complement to the Mandala of Compassion created by monks of the Namgyal Monastery. This selection of tangka paintings has come from the collections of Peter Polomski and Richard Allen. Historically, the majority of Tibet's greatest art has been bound up with religion, and the most prominent traditions include the scroll paintings of various Buddhist and Bon divinities called tangkas. The most complex of these are symmetrical depictions of many deities, and/or their symbolic representations, organized around a central divinity. Very few Tibetans, including monks, learned to read and write, and the tangka served as a pictorial lesson that the observer could remember through painted icons rather than printed script. Tangkas further provide an opportunity for meditation; by seeing and concentrating on the figures painted on the tangka, the practitioner strives for liberation or enlightenment through the act of beholding.

After a five-year hiatus, two monks from Namgyal Monastery will return to the Benton November 4-9 to create a Sand Mandala of Compassion in the East Gallery. The mandala will be ceremonially dismantled on Sunday, December 7, at 2 pm.

To complement and create a context for the tangkas and the mandala, several photographs by Kenneth Hanson has been chosen to hang in the East Gallery. They are from his book, Himalayan Portfolios: Journeys of the Imagination.

EVENTS CALENDAR
Opening Reception: Thurs, Sept 4, 5-7:30 pm

Wednesday Lunchtime Gallery Talks, 12:15 12:45 pm: Sept 17, 23, Oct 1, 15, Nov 5, 19, Dec 3

Weekend Tibetan Film Series, 2 pm: Oct 18 & 19, 25 & 26 / Nov 1 & 2, 15 & 16, 22 & 23
For film titles, visit www.thebenton.org.

Sunday Afternoon Talk: "Landscape and Belief: A View Camera in the Himalayas" with Kenneth Hanson / October 26, 3 pm; Free
For two decades Kenneth Hanson has been taking dramatic black-and-white photographs of the Himalayas, particularly the regions from the Karakoram of Pakistan to Kangchenjunga in eastern Nepal. The mountains provide a unique experience—call it beauty, joy, terror, awe—that points beyond our reasonable world and takes us to the boundary between life and death. This encounter is woven into the beliefs of the people of the mountains, where a dialog is created between an older shaman-led sacrificial culture and various forms of Tibetan Buddhism. Increasingly, the modern world intrudes. Hanson will discuss these interactions and show photographs from his book, Himalayan Portfolios.

Sand Mandala
Between Tuesday, November 4 and Sunday, November 9, Tibetan monks from Namgyal Monastery in Ithaca, New York, will create a Sand Mandala of Compassion in the museum's East Gallery. It will remain on view through Sunday, December 7, when the monks will return to dismantle it in a sacred ceremony beginning at 2 pm.

The William Benton Museum of Art, Connecticut's Official State Art Museum, is located on the University of Connecticut campus, 245 Glenbrook Road, Unit 2140, Storrs, CT 06269-2140. Gallery hours are Tuesday–Friday 10 am–4:30 pm, Saturday–Sunday 1–4:30 pm. The Store at the Benton and Cafè Muse close at 4 pm each day. Ph 860.486.4520. Website: www.thebenton.org
The museum will be closed August 30–September 1 and November 24–December 1.