Browsing: Rubin Museum of Art

This year on India’s Independence Day, we pay tribute to the wonderful Homai Vyarawalla, India’s first woman photojournalist (1913-2012) who captured the nation’s ups and downs in a series of remarkable photographs.

We are fortunate that the Rubin Museum of Art hosted a retrospective of her work right through January 2013, with free tours every day. Visitors could catch a glimpse of the India that was, and also see the work of a woman who captured history as it was being made. Her images include those on the historic meeting of Gandhi and the Congress Committee on the 1947 plan for partition, of a changing India as well as of many dignitaries who visited India including Queen Elizabeth, Ho Chi Minh, Zhou En-lai and Jacqueline Kennedy.

If you’re a fan of Tagore, music, art, literature or education, the Rubin Museum of Art is the place to be on June 1 for a free public opening reception from 6 pm -10 pm. The evening launches the opening of A Lost Future: The Otolith Group (June 1–September 17, 2018)

Some of the most poignant testimony of a culture in flux is Thomas Kelly’s ethnographic work of marginalized, landless communities. He has lived with the Badi people where the young women have had to sell themselves to keep their families out of poverty. Once they were singers and dancers and entertainers at weddings and other ceremonies – now these women have to use their bodies as a source of income.

Using a Gates grant, Kelly looked into the lives of fallen angels in various parts of Asia, from ‘maalish’ or massage boys in hotels to sex worker communities, analyzing what drove them to this work and how they could be helped by the organizations.

“These sadhus are like a living question that people have forgotten to ask,” says noted photographer Thomas Kelly. “Their painted bodies confront us with essential questions at the heart of existence…provoking the questions, ‘Who am I?’ ‘What do I need?’ ‘What is really important?’”

So as we ponder this, we can take a stroll through the beautiful Rubin Museum of Art situated in frenzied Manhattan and see how the sadhus are trying to make sense of the world.

I’m always intrigued by the fact that this gorgeous museum devoted to the soul and to spirituality was once a highly materialistic shopping heaven – Barneys! Now to walk through it is like being in a temple of peace, and each of us is free to find our own path to salvation.

The surroundings could not have been better: the beautiful, peaceful Rubin Museum of Art was the venue for a gala fundraiser for a new school building for the children of Manjushree Orphanage in Tawang, India.

“I am convinced that if more of us could spend a few minutes every day trying to develop a sense of inner peace, eventually it would become part of our lives; then everything we do will contribute to peace in the world.”

These were the words of the Dalai Lama about The Missing Peace project which took place in 2007 at the Rubin Museum, sponsored by the Committee of 100 for Tibet and the Dalai Lama Foundation. The exhibit may be long over but here as we browse some of the images and the text, re-walk the galleries in memory, the exercise becomes both a meditation and a benediction.

If you’ve ever wondered how the Internet can change lives, you have only to hear the story of John Ullman, an architectural designer in Brooklyn, NY. Since doing community service was a requirement for obtaining his American architectural license, he keyed in two words into the Google search bar: ‘India’ and ‘volunteer.’

The name of Manjushree Orphanage in Tawang, Arunachal Pradesh came up, and now three years later, this is where Ullman’s destiny lies and where he is building a brand new school for the children of this village.

In the heart of Chelsea in New York stands a bountiful bulwark and anchor of Eastern spirituality, a treasure trove of hundreds of Himalayan artifacts, as peaceful and inspiring as a Buddhist temple. This is the Rubin Museum of Art, started just four years ago by the noted philanthropists and collectors, Donald and Shelley Rubin.