Description
Purpose of grant: For The History of Himalayan Art initiative–Phase Two. Amount recommended: A four-year grant of $260,000. Summary: In November 2021, the Directors approved a one-year grant of $240,000 to the Rubin Museum for The History of Himalayan Art initiative. As originally conceived, the Asia Program planned to recommend a multi-year grant at the $500,000 level but redirected year-end funds to address urgent needs, including responses to anti-Asian racism and support for at-risk scholars from Myanmar. The Phase Two grant proposed here would achieve the originally intended level of funding for this initiative, which integrates a publication, a traveling exhibition, and a digital platform to offer multiple entry points to Himalayan art for students, educators, curators and the public. The Rubin holds one of the top collections in the West of art and cultural material from the Himalayan region. Its 4,000 objects come from the Tibetan Plateau and surrounding areas. Himalayan art has received scant attention in comparison with the arts of East and South Asia, yet the region has served as a significant cultural crossroads for centuries. To enhance literacy about this understudied material and offer the context for a more holistic understanding of Asia, the Rubin launched The History of Himalayan Art initiative. The publication focuses on 108 objects through the lens of cultural history and cross-cultural exchange. The exhibition will acquaint audiences with the visual language and meanings of Himalayan art, the materials and techniques used in its creation, the principal purposes for its production, and its cross-cultural reach. Its scalable, modular structure is designed to meet the needs of educators in disciplines ranging from art history, history, anthropology, religion, and psychology to the STEM fields. The open-access digital platform will connect the publication and exhibition, providing curriculum guides and contextual information including videos, animations, maps, and first-person narrations and interpretations by living artists and practitioners. Each of the three components can serve as an independent resource or be used in tandem. The Rubin has prioritized outreach to smaller colleges and universities. The exhibition, to launch in early 2023, will be offered to at least eight institutions free of insurance and loan fees. Since the Phase One grant, the museum reports significant progress in identifying venues, including in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Utah, Arizona and Oregon, with four commitments to date and four more in the final stages of negotiation. It will offer free planning sessions to help support integration into classrooms and public programming. Hosts are asked to collaborate with nearby educational and cultural institutions, incorporate initiatives for underserved communities and, when possible, include engagement with local Himalayan communities to foreground larger narratives of Asian culture and the Asian American experience. The publication is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts. Our funds will be applied to the exhibition and digital platform, supporting personnel; compensation for consultants, including a digital humanities specialist; travel; and production costs. If approved, the Phase Two grant, when combined with the Phase One grant, would raise overall Luce support to 19 percent of the total project budget. Recommendation: That the Directors of the Henry Luce Foundation approve a four-year grant of $260,000 to the Rubin Museum to support The History of Himalayan Art initiative—Phase Two. https://rubinmuseum.org
