The traveling exhibition Gateway to Himalayan Art continues its tour to universities across the United States, opening at the University of Utah and St. Olaf College in Minnesota.
A new, temporary public art sculpture by contemporary artist IMAGINE (a.k.a. Sneha Shrestha) will open in Jackson Heights, Queens in the spring.
The Rubin’s beloved Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room will open at the Brooklyn Museum in June.
The Rubin is partnering with the Bhutan Foundation to support the newly restored Wangduechholing Palace’s opening as a public museum and cultural center.
New York, NY: The Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art is pleased to announce a suite of anchor exhibitions and strategic initiatives for 2025, which usher in a new era for the institution as a decentralized museum.
As part of the Rubin’s flagship initiative Project Himalayan Art, the traveling exhibition Gateway to Himalayan Art will open in Utah and Minnesota. In New York, a new, temporary public art installation by Nepalese artist IMAGINE (a.k.a Sneha Shrestha) will open in Jackson Heights, Queens, in collaboration with the New York City Department of Transportation Art Program (DOT Art), and the Rubin’s renowned Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room will be unveiled at the Brooklyn Museum in June as part of a six-year partnership.
In its efforts to expand access and appreciation for Himalayan art broadly across the globe, the Rubin will also embark on a new partnership with the Bhutan Foundation to promote cultural preservation and education in Bhutan and support the Wangduechholing Palace as a public museum. Additionally, the Rubin will expand its multimedia content offerings with a new edition of Spiral magazine and a fifth season of the AWAKEN podcast, both centered on the theme of interdependence, as well as more videos created in partnership with Smarthistory that dive deep into eight objects from the Rubin’s collection. In the spring, the Museum will also open submissions for the second cycle of its artist and research grants.
“2024 was a transformative year for the Rubin. As we look ahead to the partnerships, traveling exhibitions, contemporary commissions, resources, and original content we have in store for the coming year, we are excited about the ways we will connect with new audiences in new places,” says Jorrit Britschgi, Executive Director of the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art. “Last year, facets of our new model enabled us to reach over 100,000 people through in-person experiences in places from Milan to Florida, as well as a community of more than half a million through our online content offerings. In addition, we cemented our commitment to creating meaningful connections and fostering cultural understanding by presenting Himalayan art in new ways. Our plans for 2025 will expand our horizons with innovative partnerships from Brooklyn to Bhutan.”
Additional information about the Rubin’s exhibitions, projects, and public programs will be announced in the coming months.
Gateway to Himalayan Art
February 15–July 27, 2025
Utah Museum of Fine Arts, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah September–December 2025
Flaten Art Museum, St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota
This traveling exhibition for colleges, universities, and museums introduces the main forms, concepts, meanings, and traditions in Himalayan art with objects from the Rubin’s collection. It is part of the Rubin’s flagship educational initiative Project Himalayan Art, a resource that supports the inclusion of Tibetan, Himalayan, and Inner Asian art and cultures into undergraduate teaching on Asia as well as presents Himalayan art to the general public.
The exhibition’s three areas of focus are Symbols and Meanings, Materials and Technologies, and Living Practices. Traditional scroll paintings (thangkas), sculptures in various media, and ritual items comprise the diverse range of objects on view. Among the featured installations are in-depth displays that explain the process of Nepalese lost-wax metal casting and the stages of Tibetan thangka painting. Multimedia features include videos of art making and religious and cultural practices; audio recordings of voices from Himalayan communities that highlight living traditions; and much more on the integrated digital platform that offers rich contextual material to dive deeper.
The exhibition is curated by Elena Pakhoutova, Senior Curator of Himalayan Art at the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art.
Spiral Magazine 2025
Interdependence Issue
Print and online
Available February 2025
Spiral is the Rubin’s multimedia publication that sits at the intersection of art, science, and Himalayan cultures. It asks big questions about our shared human experience through interviews, essays, fiction, art, and more. The ninth issue of the print magazine focuses on interdependence and features contributions from Buddhist teachers, scientists, sociologists, activists, and more, who illustrate how our interconnectedness permeates every aspect of the world. In addition to the publication of the print magazine in February, new content will be released online throughout the year.
Himalayan Art Up Close
A video series in collaboration with Smarthistory
Launching February 2025
Himalayan Art Up Close is a video series made in collaboration with Smarthistory, an award-winning digital platform and the most-visited art history resource in the world, with a database of public art history information for all audiences. Each video highlights an object from the Rubin’s preeminent collection of Himalayan art and features Rubin curators Karl Debreczeny and Elena Pakhoutova in dialogue with Smarthistory art historians Beth Harris and Steven Zucker. In 2025, the Rubin and Smarthistory will release eight new videos, providing an accessible and engaging online introduction to the art and culture of the Tibetan, Himalayan, and Inner Asian regions for students, art enthusiasts, and learners across the globe.
About a Living Culture (working title)
Community Commission with artist IMAGINE (a.k.a. Sneha Shrestha)
In partnership with New York City Department of Transportation Art Program (DOT Art)
Opening spring 2025
Diversity Plaza, Jackson Heights, Queens
Nepalese artist IMAGINE (a.k.a Sneha Shrestha) presents a new, temporary public art installation that celebrates and take inspiration from the diverse Himalayan cultures of the Jackson Heights, Queens, neighborhood. Originally from Kathmandu, Nepal, and working between Boston and Kathmandu, IMAGINE has created public murals around the world and often incorporates her native language into her work while meshing the aesthetics of Sanskrit scriptures with a graffiti art style. She has shown her meditative artworks in several museums including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Rubin Museum, where her work was featured as part of Reimagine: Himalayan Art Now.
For her first public art sculpture, IMAGINE is creating an eight-foot-tall installation in the shape of an arch made of repeating rows of Ka, the first letter of the Nepali alphabet. In Nepal, religious and sacred environments feature variations in the form of archways, which encourage passersby to look through and get blessings from the divine. IMAGINE’S sculpture will invite the public to interact and experience a meditation and “send” it out to the universe as they embark upon their pathways through Diversity Plaza.
About a Living Culture (working title) is a NYC DOT Art Community Commission in partnership with the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art and will be unveiled in spring 2025. Community Commissions is a signature NYC DOT Art initiative in which the agency collaborates with community-based organizations to commission artists to design and install temporary public art on NYC DOT infrastructure citywide.
Rubin Museum Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room
Opening June 2025
Brooklyn Museum
In June 2025, the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art’s beloved Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room will open in a custom space in the Brooklyn Museum’s Arts of Asia galleries as part of a six-year partnership between the two institutions. The Rubin Museum Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room evokes the aesthetics and atmosphere of a traditional Tibetan sacred space and offers visitors the opportunity to experience Tibetan religious art in its cultural context. More than 100 works of art and ritual objects from the Rubin’s collection are presented as they would be in an elaborate private household shrine, where devotees make offerings, pray, contemplate, and perform rituals. The design of the Shrine Room showcases these objects in an immersive environment that incorporates elements of traditional Tibetan architecture and the color schemes of Tibetan homes.
The display of the Rubin Museum Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room will enhance the Brooklyn Museum’s important collections of Asian art, which were fully reimagined in a major gallery renovation that was unveiled from 2017 to 2023.
The installation is curated by Elena Pakhoutova, Senior Curator of Himalayan Art at the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art.
Rubin Research and Art Projects Grants
Spring 2025
The annual Rubin Grants support art and research initiatives that promote the rich cultural legacy and living traditions of Himalayan regions. As part of the first award cycle in 2024, 17 projects were selected from nearly 150 applications from 30 countries totaling nearly $200K in support. In 2025, artists, scholars, and researchers are invited to submit letters of inquiry between February 15 and March 15, 2025, for consideration.
AWAKEN podcast season 5
Launching summer 2025
AWAKEN is a Webby Honoree podcast about the dynamic path to enlightenment and what it means to “wake up.” The series features the personal stories of guests who share how they’ve experienced a shift in their awareness, and as a result, their perspective on life. The fifth season focuses on the theme of interdependence and illustrates how our interconnectedness permeates every aspect of the world, with insights from artists, writers, psychologists, and Buddhist teachers.
Cultural Preservation and Education in Bhutan
A Partnership with the Bhutan Foundation
Fall 2025
The Rubin Museum and the Bhutan Foundation, a nonprofit based in Washington, DC, are launching a partnership to promote cultural preservation and education in Bhutan, working closely with the Wangduechhoeling Palace, the birthplace of Bhutan’s monarchy. After a decade-long restoration project led by the Bhutan Foundation, and a ceremonial launch by Her Majesty Gyaltsuen Jetsun Pema Wangchuck in October 2024, the Palace will fully open as a museum and cultural center in 2025, focused on Bhutan’s history, culture, religion, and craftsmanship. In this next phase, the Rubin will support expertise in the areas of content development, visitor experience, and collection management, collaborating with Palace staff and museum professionals in the wider region. The Rubin will co-create in-person workshops and ideation sessions, uniting participants from Bhutan and the Rubin Museum for mutual learning and professional exchange.
Ongoing: Reimagine: Himalayan Art Now
Closes February 15, 2025
Wrightwood 659 Chicago, IL
Reimagine: Himalayan Art Now presents the art of 28 contemporary artists from the Himalayas, Asia, and diaspora whose work is presented in dialogue with objects from the Rubin’s permanent collection, inviting new ways of encountering traditional Himalayan art.
The exhibition debuted at the Rubin’s former New York City building and ran from March 15 to October 6, 2024. This second iteration of the exhibition features 18 commissions, as well as recent works across mediums—including painting, sculpture, sound, video, and installation—that reimagine the forms, symbols, and narratives found within the living cultural heritage of Tibetan, Nepalese, Bhutanese, and other Himalayan regions.
Participating artists include Asha Kama Wangdi, VAST Bhutan; Bharat Rai; Charwei TSAI; Chitra Ganesh; Jasmine Rajbhandari; John Tsung; Jupiter Pradhan; Kabi Raj Lama; Kunsang Gyasto; Kunsang Kyirong; Losel Yauch; LuYang; Manish Lal Shrestha; Meena Kayastha; Monsal Pekar; Pema (“Tintin”) Tshering; Prithvi Shrestha; Roshan Pradhan; Salil Subedi; Shraddha Shrestha; Shushank Shrestha; IMAGINE (a.k.a. Sneha Shrestha); Sonam Dolma Brauen; Tenzin Gyurmey Dorjee; Tenzin Mingyur Paldron; Tsherin Sherpa; Uma Bista; and Yangdzom Lama.
The exhibition is curated by Michelle Bennett Simorella, Director of Curatorial Administration and Collections at Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art.
Credits
Leadership support for Project Himalayan Art is provided by the Henry Luce Foundation.
Project Himalayan Art has been made possible in part by a major grant from
The National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom. Project Himalayan Art was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services MA-253379-OMS-23.
Lead support is provided by the Ellen Bayard Weedon Foundation, Bob and Lois Baylis, Barbara Bowman, the E. Rhodes & Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, Noah P. Dorsky, Fred Eychaner, Christopher J. Fussner, the Estate of Lisina M. Hoch, Matt and Ann Nimetz, The Randleigh Foundation Trust, Shelley and Donald Rubin, and Jesse Smith and Annice Kenan.
Major support is provided by Daphne Hoch Cunningham and John Cunningham, Stephen and Sharon Davies, the Edward & Elizabeth Gardner Foundation, Mimi Gardner Gates, Hongwei Li, Max Meehan, the Monimos Foundation, Edward O'Neill, The Prospect Hill Foundation, Sarah and Craig Richardson, Rossi & Rossi, Basha Frost Rubin and Scott Grinsell, the Andrew Sabin Family Foundation, Namita and Arun Saraf, Eric and Alexandra Schoenberg, Eileen Caulfield Schwab, UOVO, Sandy Song Yan, and the Zhiguan Museum of Art.
Special Support is provided by: Dr. Bibhakar Sunder Shakya, to honor the memory and legacy of Professor Dina Bangdel, art historian, curator, cultural activist, and educator from Nepal.
Samphe and Tenzin Lhalungpa, to honor the memory and works of L.P. Lhalungpa, Tibetan scholar, broadcaster, and educator.
Reimagine: Himalayan Art Now is supported by Bob and Lois Baylis, Barbara Bowman, Daphne Hoch Cunningham and John Cunningham, Noah P. Dorsky, Marina Abramović Institute (MAI), Mimi Gardner Gates, Fred Eychaner, Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, Jack Lampl, Dan Gimbel of NEPC, LLC, Agnes Gund, New York Life, Matt and Ann Nimetz, Namita and Arun Saraf, The Prospect Hill Foundation, Eileen Caulfield Schwab, Taipei Cultural Center in New York, and UOVO.
Reimagine: Himalayan Art Now is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
Project Himalayan Art and Reimagine: Himalayan Art Now are supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Credits
Leadership support for Project Himalayan Art is provided by the Henry Luce Foundation.
Project Himalayan Art has been made possible in part by a major grant from
The National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom. Project Himalayan Art was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services MA-253379-OMS-23.
Lead support is provided by the Ellen Bayard Weedon Foundation, Bob and Lois Baylis, Barbara Bowman, the E. Rhodes & Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, Noah P. Dorsky, Fred Eychaner, Christopher J. Fussner, the Estate of Lisina M. Hoch, Matt and Ann Nimetz, The Randleigh Foundation Trust, Shelley and Donald Rubin, and Jesse Smith and Annice Kenan.
Major support is provided by Daphne Hoch Cunningham and John Cunningham, Stephen and Sharon Davies, the Edward & Elizabeth Gardner Foundation, Mimi Gardner Gates, Hongwei Li, Max Meehan, the Monimos Foundation, Edward O'Neill, The Prospect Hill Foundation, Sarah and Craig Richardson, Rossi & Rossi, Basha Frost Rubin and Scott Grinsell, the Andrew Sabin Family Foundation, Namita and Arun Saraf, Eric and Alexandra Schoenberg, Eileen Caulfield Schwab, UOVO, Sandy Song Yan, and the Zhiguan Museum of Art.
Special Support is provided by: Dr. Bibhakar Sunder Shakya, to honor the memory and legacy of Professor Dina Bangdel, art historian, curator, cultural activist, and educator from Nepal.
Samphe and Tenzin Lhalungpa, to honor the memory and works of L.P. Lhalungpa, Tibetan scholar, broadcaster, and educator.
Reimagine: Himalayan Art Now is supported by Bob and Lois Baylis, Barbara Bowman, Daphne Hoch Cunningham and John Cunningham, Noah P. Dorsky, Marina Abramović Institute (MAI), Mimi Gardner Gates, Fred Eychaner, Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, Jack Lampl, Dan Gimbel of NEPC, LLC, Agnes Gund, New York Life, Matt and Ann Nimetz, Namita and Arun Saraf, The Prospect Hill Foundation, Eileen Caulfield Schwab, Taipei Cultural Center in New York, and UOVO.
Reimagine: Himalayan Art Now is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
Project Himalayan Art and Reimagine: Himalayan Art Now are supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.
