“Death is Not The End,” an Exhibition About the Afterlife in Tibetan Buddhist and Christian Art at The Rubin Museum

Buddhist and Christian cultures share the certainty of our mortality in this world while also proposing an existence after this lifetime. Depending on the circumstances, there is a promise of a better place, or one of further purifying suffering to ensure the eventual attainment of a better existence. These views, in their most general sense, refute the permanence of death while accepting its inevitability. “Death Is Not the End” considers the ideas that balance this apparent contradiction.

The exhibition will be organized around three major themes: The Human Condition, or the shared understanding of our mortality in this world; States In-Between, or the concepts of limbo, purgatory, and bardo; and (After)life, focusing on resurrection, ideas of transformation, and heaven.

“During a time of great global uncertainty, loss, and turmoil, many question and ponder the various ideas related to the afterlife,” says Senior Curator of Himalayan Art Elena Pakhoutova. “In pairing artworks from Christianity—the most familiar cultural framework in the United States—with those from Buddhism, a less known visual culture in the West, we highlight a universal common ground and encourage visitors’ inquiry as they engage with these diverse objects. I hope that this exhibition inspires conversations around the sometimes challenging or uncomfortable topic of what comes after life, as well as respect for different perspectives and approaches.”

Notable artworks on view from the Rubin Museum’s collection will include The Wheel of Life painting (Tibet; 19th century), which illustrates the larger context of human existence, the fundamental causes of suffering, and the inevitability of death and rebirth; the Yama Dharmaraja painting (Tibet; 18th century) of a wrathful deity associated with Vajrabhairava, conqueror of death; the painted terracotta sculpture of dancing skeletons known as Lords of the Charnel Ground, Smashana Adipati (Tibet; 18th century), who protect tantric yogis striving to be free from attachment; Bone Ornaments (Tibet, 18th–19th century), an apron practitioners would wear to overcome attachment to self and their body; Avalokiteshvara and His Pure Realm (Tibet, late 18th–early 19th century), a painting of the realm where beings aspire to be reborn, to be in the presence of the deity free from suffering; and more.

Left: Wheel of Life; Tibet or Mongolia; 19th century; pigments on cloth; Rubin Museum of Art; gift of Shelley and Donald Rubin; C2006.66.131 (HAR 78)

Center: Pieter van der Heyden (Netherlandish, ca. 1525–1569); The Descent of Christ Into Limbo; Antwerp; ca. 1561; engraving; first state of two; sheet: 9 1/16 x 11 7/16 in. (23 x 29 cm); lent by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1926 (26.72.41)

Right: Sarvavid Album Leaf #53: Liberation from Hell; Inner Mongolia; 18th–19th century; pigments on paper; Collection City of Antwerp – MAS; AE.1977.0026.41-54; photograph by Bart Huysmans & Michel Wuyts

Works on loan will include the painting A Woman Divided into Two Representing Life and Death (ca. 18th century; Wellcome Collection), an allegorical depiction of the human condition, which is less overtly religious and intended to provoke intellectual and moralistic reflection on mortality; The Last Judgment by a follower of Hieronymus Bosch (late 16th century; Philadelphia Museum of Art), in which the horrors of hell so vividly portrayed are thought to provide an encouragement to renounce immoral living in anticipation of the Last Judgement and salvation; Pieter van der Heyden’s engraving of The Descent of Christ into Limbo, after Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Netherlands; ca. 1561), which shows Christ appearing in a sphere of radiance, guiding souls that are crowding out of the hellish mouth of limbo and led to heaven; a Buddhist album leaf painting illustrating Beings Liberated from Hell by the Blessings of the Buddha (Inner Mongolia; 18th–19th century; Museum aan de Stroom, Antwerp), which depicts another instance of “divine intervention” by Buddha Vairochana; and more.

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