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CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, July 9, 2003: About 200 Hindu and Buddhist sculptures and paintings are on display at the Art Institute of Chicago. Entitled “Himalayas: An Aesthetic Adventure,” the exhibits are on loan from many top-notch North American collections. The exhibition has been organized by noted art historian Pratapaditya Pal who says that his intention was to create a masterpiece show, based on aesthetic excellence rather than on focused themes or theory. Among the pieces on display is a 10th-century Nepali relief of the Lord Siva with his family on Mount Kailash in a crowded court of dancers. There is a fabulous gilded copper sculpture of the Buddha as an earthly sage and a savior, on loan from the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth; an eighth-century relief of Kamadeva, the god of love, surrounded by his consorts; a renowned gilded bronze from the Norton Simon Foundation, that depicts the Buddha at the instant of enlightenment, sitting on a cushion patterned with silver and copper inlay, a Kashmiri specialty; and a 12th-century painting from western Tibet in which the Buddha is dressed in a beautiful patchwork robe. The exhibition will be open until August 17, 2003.

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