"Realms of the Dharma" at LACMA

Buddha Shakyamuni, India, Bihar, about 850. LACMA. Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck Collection, Museum Associates purchase. Photo © Museum Associates/LACMA 

Buddhism originated in 5th century BC India and expanded in waves throughout southern and eastern Asia. Ultimately it captured the Western imagination too—think Allen Ginsburg, Kurt Cobain, Steve Jobs, or White Lotus. 

In America as elsewhere, local traditions took up the new iconography, with strikingly different results. The diversity of Buddhist art is a running theme of LACMA's "Realms of the Dharma: Buddhist Art Across Asia." It brings together 180 Buddhist sculptures, ritual objects, and paintings from Pakistan to Japan; 1st century BC to early 20th century. Save for one loan, all are from LACMA's collection. The exhibition is a remix of one that appeared at the Museo Nacional de Antropoligía, Mexico City, in 2018. COVID quashed plans to send the works on to Austin and Portland. Now in the Resnick Pavilion, "Realms of the Dharma" runs through July 12, 2026. It will presumably be the last big permanent collection show prior to the Geffen Galleries opening next year. Stephen Little and Tushara Bindu Gude curated "Realms" and wrote the catalog, which reproduces many objects in color for the first time. 

Photo © Museum Associates/LACMA

Almost since its inception in Exposition Park, the Los Angeles County Museum of History, Science, and Art aspired to have a great Asian collection. In the 1920s museum director William Bryan—an ornithologist—arranged to buy the Chinese art collection of J.W.N. Munthe, a Norwegian-born soldier of fortune. Unfortunately, Bryan knew birds, not Bodhisattvas, and the Munthe collection was exposed as a hodgepodge of copies and tourist art. The Los Angeles County Supervisors, who had financed the first installment of the purchase, cut off all funding for art acquisitions. Taxpayer money for buying museum art was a thing at the time (not now!), and for decades the Munthe scandal cast a shadow over the museum. 

Gozanze Myo-o: Bright King of the East, Japan, Early Heian Period, 10th century. LACMA. Los Angeles County Fund

By the 1950s, however, the County relented enough to buy a couple of impressive Japanese Buddhist works: a Heian period wood sculpture and a Kamakura scroll. 

It was left to the private sector to build a comprehensive collection of Buddhist art. The donors of the show's objects include many of the museum's prominent supporters, from Anna Bing Arnold to the Collectors Committee. Unquestionably, the pivotal figures are Bombay-born New York art dealer Nasli Heeramaneck (1902–1971) and Bengali-American curator Dr. Pratapaditya Pal (1935–). As a gallerist Heeramaneck's policy was to "buy five, sell four, and keep the best for himself." Known as the Duveen of Indian art, he assembled a choice collection of South Asian material with the intention of placing it in a museum one day. The collection went on view at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts in 1966, yet Boston's Brahmin proved unwilling to pay the price Heeramaneck was asking. Boston's new curator of Indian art, Pratapaditya Pal, helped Heeramaneck place part of his collection at LACMA. The new, art-only museum had just opened on Wilshire Blvd and was looking for a way to distinguish itself. It had trustees flush with oil, real estate, and Hollywood money. They bought 345 pieces from Heeramaneck: stone sculptures, bronzes, paintings, jades, crystals, manuscripts, and ceremonial objects. Time magazine called it the most important American museum acquisition of the postwar period. 

Attributed to Kumaradeva, The Buddhist Goddess Shyama Tara (Green Tara) Attended by Sitat Tara (White Tara) and Bhrikuti, India, Madhya Pradesh, about 8th century. LACMA. Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck Collection, Museum Associates purchase

The Bodhisattva Maitreya, India, Bihar, Gaya District, 11th century. LACMA. Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck Collection, Museum Associates purchase. Photo © Museum Associates/LACMA

Pal considered taking a job at LACMA. His friend Sherman Lee, director of the Cleveland Art Museum, warned him that LACMA would be a demotion from Boston. Pal ignored that advice and became LACMA's head of Indian and Islamic Art. Not so coincidentally, Heeramaneck also collected Islamic material, and that collection ended up at LACMA too. 

The Jina Buddha Ratnasambhava, Central Tibet (by a Newar artist), about 1100–1125. LACMA. Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck Collection, purchased with funds provided by the Jane and Justin Dart Foundation. Photo © Museum Associates/LACMA

Pal was able to build selectively on the Heeramaneck collection, sometimes spending six-figure sums for important sculptures. Meanwhile other curators and collectors greatly expanded LACMA's holdings of Japanese and Korean art. 

Hakuin Ekaku, Daruma, 18th century. LACMA, gift of Murray Smith. Photo © Museum Associates/LACMA

LACMA's Japanese collection is best known for the Edo period nature paintings favored by Joe and Etsuko Price. Though the Prices did not buy much religious art, they are represented here by a large, glowering Daruma. A quite different Daruma by Hakuin Ekaku is from an important group of Zen paintings donated by Murray Smith. 

Probably Shakyamuni, China, Tang dynasty, about 700–800. LACMA, gift of Ruth Trubner in memory of Henry Trubner and purchased with funds provided by museum supporters

The museum's holding of Chinese Buddhist art remains relatively modest. Shown above is one of the few examples of Chinese marble sculpture in a U.S. museum. Like Greco-Roman marbles, it was originally painted and retains traces of pigment and gilding. Dated to the 8th century, it was owned by Henry Trubner, a curator successively at LACMA, the Royal Ontario Museum, and the Seattle Art Museum. Long on loan to LACMA, it was acquired in 2007 as a partial gift/purchase from Trubner's widow, Ruth.

Stele with Buddha and Two Bodhisattvas, China, Eastern Wei dynasty, 534-50. LACMA. Purchased with funds from the 2022 Collectors Committee and other museum supporters

Making their debut in "Realms" are an Eastern Wei dynasty Stele with Buddha and Two Bodhisattvas bought by the 2022 Collectors Committee and a hanging scroll, The Cosmic Buddha Vairochana, donated by Richard and Ruth Dickes. With dazzling color for a silk painting of its age, it blends Daoist and Buddhist personages in a design of fractal complexity. 

The Cosmic Buddha Vairochana, Chinese, about 1600. LACMA, gift of Richard and Ruth Dickes. Photo © Museum Associates/LACMA