Works of art from south Asia will arrive at the Erie Art Museum soon.
The exhibit will also include bronze pieces, stone pieces and Tibetan watercolor paintings on silk that were outlawed and smuggled out of Tibet. Very few of them are in art museums in the United States today.
Amanda Steadman, assistant curator at the Erie Art Museum, said one of the nice things about this exhibit is that it uses pieces that the museum has in its collection that it doesn’t always get to show. The art museum owns almost 800 pieces and does not have enough room to show them.
Steadman said the museum will be opening the exhibit in a few weeks and an end date has yet to be placed on the show. The show will probably run for at least a year. The museum may need to switch out pieces.
“I think the show will be received well by the public because it has a lot of pieces from the old bronze show, which was really popular,” Steadman said. “Also switching out the paintings with different pieces will help to keep things interesting.”
She said she also thinks that having the show run for a while will make it easier for people, such as teachers, to plan trips to the museum. It’ll also be easier for the museum to learn how to plan tours.
The museum does not know a lot about the artists, or who the artists are, Steadman said. That’s especially true of the pieces that are old or smuggled out of Tibet.
Steadman said the unifying theme of these pieces is geographical relations and Hindu themes.
Even though the exhibit isn’t fully set up, people can still walk through the space.
“It’s interesting to look through it,” Steadman said, “because you get to see all of the behind-the-scenes planning and furniture moving that you don’t often get to see before the exhibit is shown.”
Steadman said the art museum will also have other exhibits opening soon, including a photography exhibit by Kathe Kowalski, a former Edinboro University professor, and an exhibit called Looking at Lincoln.
A gallery opening for all of these exhibits will take place on Dec. 7. Admission is free on this day and the museum will provide refreshments.
