Enshrining Tibetan Buddhist Artifacts at Home. For Now. – The New York Times

The story of how Alice S. Kandell discovered Tibetan Buddhist art sounds like the plot of a fanciful movie.

As a Sarah Lawrence College student in the 1960s, she wanted to put Tibet on the itinerary of a class trip, but her parents objected because of unrest related to the Chinese occupation there. A close friend tried, however, and got as far as India.

That friend, Hope Cooke, met the crown prince of Sikkim, which borders Tibet. Eventually, “she married him,” Ms. Kandell said. “She was becoming the queen and invited me to the coronation.”

By then, Ms. Kandell was studying psychology. In asking for leave to go to Sikkim (now part of India), she told her professor the tale. “He said, ‘When fantasy becomes reality, a member of the Harvard psychology department should be there to witness it,’” she recalled.


So she went. “I was overwhelmed by the beauty of it,” she said of the region. “I was most taken by the art.”

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A small carved wooden shrine in Ms. Kandell’s collection, with niches filled with statues depicting a variety of Buddhist deities.CreditDaniel Dorsa for The New York Times

In the intervening years she established her career as a child psychologist in New York, as well as becoming known as a photographer and the author of several books.

These days, her Upper East Side apartment features around 250 objects, largely from Tibet. Many are bronzes depicting the Buddha and other deities. The collection includes household objects like teacups, too, and the bulk of the trove was made between the 17th and 19th centuries, what she called the high-water mark of Tibetan art.

There’s a many-armed Yamantaka figure, representing the vanquisher of death, in gilt bronze, that she admires for its detail. “He is a deity who is both creating and destroying at the same time, an important part of the Buddhist philosophy,” she said. She also pointed out two female deities in gilt bronze from around the same time, a Tara and a Dharmapala, as favorites for their movement and grace.


Most stunning is a dedicated shrine room that is richly layered with at least 100 pieces, including a ceremonial dagger, prayer beads and multiple bronzes, arranged as they might have been in a noble family’s home.

The room, which is visually striking, is kept cool. “It’s cold and dry in Tibet,” Ms. Kandell said, gesturing to a series of complex thangka paintings on silk. “I don’t want steam heat on these.”

Ms. Kandell, who has retired and now performs nonsinging parts at the Metropolitan Opera, only buys objects from individuals, and she isn’t a fan of auctions.

And she is being increasingly philanthropic: In 2011, she donated the contents of another shrine room (some 250 objects) to the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington, where it is now on view.

On the occasion of the release of a new book — “Assembly of the Exalted: The Tibetan Shrine Room From the Alice S. Kandell Collection,” by Donald S. Lopez Jr. and Rebecca Bloom — Ms. Kandell spoke about her 50-year passion. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

A gilt bronze figure from Thailand that is 200 to 300 years old. The hand gesture indicates peace in the family.CreditDaniel Dorsa for The New York Times

There was a big gap between discovering these pieces and actively collecting them. What was the spark?


In the 1990s a friend took me to the home of a Brooklyn collector and expert who had Tibetan antiques, and I felt a rush: “I’m home.” Gradually he helped me collect things. It became so much, we put it in the shape of a shrine room. I did this all after my children were gone, turning over the dining room to it.

What have the reactions been?

A curator at the Smithsonian came in here, and I was in the other room. She stayed for about five minutes, and she started to cry.

A Dharma wheel flanked by a male and female deer, an image that can be found atop Tibetan Buddhist temples.CreditDaniel Dorsa for The New York Times

Wow. How about at the Sackler?

People have the most incredible religious experiences, even if it’s one minute or one second. We had philosophers saying, “I’m at the end of the universe. It’s changing my life.” And a college student who said, “OMG. I’m, like, whoa.” Same thing.

Yamantaka, a Buddhist creator and destroyer, center, with the female deity Tara, left, and Avalokiteshvara, with 11 faces, right.CreditDaniel Dorsa for The New York Times

Are you still collecting?

If I see a piece that’s old and beautiful and fits my shrine room, I can’t help myself.

But at the same time, you’re giving things away?

I’m actually ready to give away everything now — everything. I’m not going to live forever. But I want to give it to a museum that will show all of it. I must share it — this stuff doesn’t belong to me, really. Great art doesn’t belong to anybody.


Thank you
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/05/arts/design/alice-kandell-show-us-your-wall.html