Media inquiries, please contact Darlene Markovich at
(650) 327-3271.
Press releases (most recent releases are first):
March 9, 2007 - The Rubin Museum of Art, New York
January 26, 2006 - UCLA Fowler Museum to Premiere...
July 11, 2005 - International Art Exhibition Inspired by the Dalai Lama Launches in Bay Area.
December 11, 2007 Expressions of peace —The Mercury News (San Jose CA)
[free registration is required to read the article online]
"Peace is one of those ideas with as many definitions as there are people in the world. The Dalai Lama - the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader whose oficial title includes such powerful honorifics as 'Ocean of Wisdom' - has symbolized the hope of peace for millions. And in this one man, who wears glasses and utilitarian shoes, lies a world of possibilities..."
November, 2007 Yo! What Happened to Peace?
Has featured The Missing Peace in its Katherine's Blog . Yo! is well worth visiting even if they hadn't featured TMP, as an example of art and peace.
November 23, 2007 Make art, not war—in Palo Alto Online
Palo Altan Darlene Markovich has a modest goal for her retirement project. She wants it to reach millions of people all over the world."
June, 2007 (and May 2006) KQED SPARK
Don't miss these online material, video segments and curriculum materials on Missing Peace artists Seyed Alavi and Binh Danh
You may also view the SPARK video segments directly [Uses Real Player]:
Summer, 2007 The Rubin Museum of Art, NYC
Audio interviews with Ken Aptekar, Dove Bradshaw, Lewis deSoto and Tenzing Rigdol
You may also listen to the interviews directly:
Ken Aptekar
Dove Bradshaw
Lewis deSoto
Tenzing Rigdol
July 31, 2007 The Village Voice
The Icon's Icon: 80+ Artists Do Up the Dalai Lama in a Double Group Show
—by Robert Shuster
Electrocuting Pope Benedict's cross-emblazoned loafers will likely earn you an express ticket to hell. But the Dalai Lama? Charge up his shoes and he gently smirks. Experimenting with the Kirlian life force, artist Sylvie Fleury passed high-voltage current through a slightly worn pair of Dexters donated by Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th DL, then snapped a photo of the fiery corona. Told of the result, the man called Kundun just laughed, suggesting that since the shoes had been resoled several times, their aura might actually belong to the cobbler.
July 13, 2007 PBS: Religion & Ethics Newsweekly
Dalai Lama Art Exhibit
This page includes both a commentary on TMPP at the Rubin Museum and also a video segment in which RMA curator Caron Smith discusses the exhibition. Don't miss it!
June 2007 KQED-TV
SPARK - Seyed Alavi interview
"Art to me is the process of refinement."
-- Seyed Alavi
View Spark segment on Seyed Alavi. Original airdate: June 2007. (Running Time: 12:39)
For Seyed Alavi, creating objects and asking questions are equally important in his art-making process. For nearly two decades, the Bay Area artist has been working with public institutions to create conceptual works of art to be experienced by passersby. Spark follows Alavi as he offers a guided tour of his art and working process.
March 30, 2007 The New York Sun
In This Exhibit, It’s ‘Hello, Dalai’
—Benjamin Ivry
“Religious portraiture is a delicate subject in our day. The heads of major religions more often appear to be bureaucrats than heroes, pen pushers rather than warrior saints. ...
“A happy exception to this typical internecine squabbling is Tenzin Gyatso (b. 1935), the current Dalai Lama. The leader of Tibetan Buddhism, the 14th Dalai Lama is the focus of a traveling exhibit, "The Missing Peace: Artists Consider the Dalai Lama," which opened recently at the Rubin Museum of Art in Chelsea. ...
“One section of the exhibit, intelligently curated by Randy Rosenberg, contains "Interpreted Portraits" of the Dalai Lama, while other parts are devoted to broad concepts like "Humanity in Transition" and "Belief Systems." The portraits are stationed at the beginning of the show, and carry great visual weight. ...
“In other artworks, the element of humor — hardly welcome in portraiture of other religions — resounds with unbuttoned bonhomie. ...
“Such light-hearted imagery may be unexpected, even to those accustomed to the tradition of Buddhist humor. At a 2003 press conference at the Guggenheim Museum, the Dalai Lama drew chortles from the crowd by relentlessly teasing the ever-present Richard Gere, saying he wished that Mr. Gere had never converted to Buddhism. ...
“For any New Yorker whose worst ‘provocations’ to be endured are subway delays and restaurant tables too near the kitchen, this can only prove an inspiring example indeed.”
From La Revista Mensual del Siglo XXI (The 21st Century Monthly Magazine)
A great in-depth review of Salustiano's work Reincarnation, which graces the cover of the catalog of The Missing Peace: Artists Consider the Dalai Lama. The article is in Spanish.
[Translated excerpts] "In his preparation of the work, Salustiano decided to interview buddhist monks, lamas and religious officials. He asked them to synthesize their religion, buddhism, into one word. Almost all of them responded (though somewhat circuitously) - nonviolence. They also spoke of compassion. The actual name [of the] 'Dalai Lama' signifies 'Ocean of Compassion.' As more ideas began to arise, from a buddhist belief system so distant from our western way of thinking, one idea begins to grab our attention - the phenomenon of reincarnation.
"The Salustiano work contains a double 'twist' regarding the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama. What might be the most difficult test to [require both] pardon and compassion on the part of the Tibetan community - as represented in their leader? - to reincarnate in one's enemy. "
[Just a hint for those of you reading this online - the Salustiano work can be seen in our online virtual tour - and in that tour is a full explanation of this "double twist" the reviewer refers to!
Shambala Sun
October/November 2006
The Missing Peace is written up in this feature-length article [download/read... 2mB PDF] in Shambala Sun.
November 2, 2006— Chicago Tribune
Art of peace: 88 viewpoints on the Dalai Lama
By Alan G. Artner, Tribune art critic
"The Missing Peace: Artists Consider the Dalai Lama," the theme exhibition that has come to the Loyola University Museum of Art, is different. It presents new and existing works contributed by 88 contemporary artists who have been moved by one of the world's great leaders and his values. The expressed intent of the show is not only to engage but also to heal, and that largeness of purpose contributes to making it the finest theme exhibition seen in Chicago this year." (read...)
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Portraits of Peace
Read this publication [subcription required] online...
August 11, 2006—The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles
By Morris Newman
“The final impression is not one of evangelizing for Eastern religion, as much as a search for definitions of goodness and spirituality, whatever those things may be, amid the noise and confusion of present-day culture.” [Read the full review online...]
August 8, 2006—Kids off the Couch
“Our kids are walking advertisements for international couture—just turn over their t-shirt labels and tour the world. Part of being a global citizen is appreciating customs and traditions that are different than our own.” ... “Now familiar with the Dalai Lama and the notion of a spiritual journey, we set off to UCLA's Fowler Museum to take in "The Missing Peace: Artists Consider the Dalai Lama," an exhibit that brings together eighty-eight contemporary artists who have been inspired by the Dalai Lama's message of peace. While many parents might hestiate about taking kids to an art exhibit, we urge you to take a deep breath and forge ahead -- it's hard to imagine more kid-friendly art.” [Read about this children's activity online...]
July 6-19, 2006 Earplug
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lama
Ryuichi Sakamoto pays tribute to Tibetan spiritual leader
"Ryuichi Sakamoto's 'Sonic Mandala' is in divine company at UCLA's Fowler Museum of Cultural History. The award-laden composer and anti-nuclear/peace activist" ... "At the very first moment when he walked into the room, I thought I saw a light coming from him." [Read the full review online...]
Earplug is a twice-monthly email magazine.
From Coagula Art Journal, August issue, now available
THE FOWLER MUSEUM'S COUP:
THE MISSING PEACE - 88 ARTISTS CONSIDER THE DALAI LAMA
by S.A. DuTan
“While this exhibition is rooted in lofty ideals and projects the best intentions, it succeeds in captivating the viewer, over and over, thanks to the uncompromising quality of the works, their freshness and boldness, their diversity, complexity and power. This is actually what we expect of art—not the sensational, the competitive, the marketable, the smart and the smug, no: intelligence and inspiration and the transformation they would operate on us. Here it is: 88 from 25 countries, from Abramovic to Yamaguchi, a multi-media panorama of contemporary art practice at its best.” [Coagula is available only in print.]
June 21, 2006 L.A. Weekly
THE DALAI MUSEUM
Gaze navelly, paint globally
BY DOUG HARVEY
The Tibetan lineage of Buddhism, rooted as it is in the variegated sensual traditions of tantric Hinduism and the Himalayan shamanic rituals of the Bon religion, is easily the most artistically bountiful of the lot, especially compared to the more stripped-down and pop-culture-familiar cosmology and aesthetics of Zen. Not only is Tibetan Buddhism chock-full of elaborately delineated demons, deities, heavens and hells — each lovingly illustrated across the centuries in sumptuous, psychedelic paintings known as thangkas; it also features prayer wheels and prayer flags and prayer beads, and kaleidoscopic mandalas made of paints, colored sands or yak butter. [Read this article online...]
June 18, 2006 Los Angeles Times
Peace, patience, partying - The values of the Dalai Lama inspire an art exhibition, and UCLA Fowler Museum offers a gala preview. [This article is not available online.]
June 15, 2006 Los Angeles Times
A spiritual 'Peace' of mind
Traveling exhibit unites works that reflect on Buddhism and the Dalai Lama
By Cynthia Dea, Times Staff Writer
Tenzin GYATSO, the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, has met with world leaders and
pop culture icons. He has been the subject of books and movies. And now he
is the focal point of the traveling group exhibition "The Missing Peace:
Artists Consider the Dalai Lama," premiering at the UCLA Fowler Museum.
The exhibition, co-sponsored by Tibetan support groups the Dalai Lama
Foundation and the Committee of 100 for Tibet, includes film, photography,
sculpture and video works by contemporary artists from 25 countries. [This article is not available online.]
June 11, 2006 The New York Times
Such a Casual Man, but So Many Auras
By KAY LARSON
Published: June 11, 2006
IN a recent portrait of the Dalai Lama, all we see of him is a foot in a blue flip-flop and a flicker of burgundy robe. To view this painting as a prayer for peace might seem a stretch. But not for the artist, Losang Gyatso, who regards the Tibetan leader as a world emissary of healing.
"We believe he is an emanation of Avalokitesvara, who represents compassion," Mr. Gyatso explained, speaking of the deity who is central to Tibet's self-image. Encircling the flip-flop is the mandala, which for Tibetans is a microcosm of the universe, with a deity normally at the hub.
The challenge of portraying peace seems to haunt contributions to "The Missing Peace: Artists Consider the Dalai Lama," an exhibition in Los Angeles of works by 88 people from 25 countries, most of them strangers to the man they are depicting.
Mr. Gyatso, born in Tibet, has at least met his subject. Standing in line for an audience with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India, he recalled, he realized that because most Tibetans in similar circumstances bend their heads in reverence, they see only his foot.
But what a foot. For one thing, it is the living reminder of an ancient lineage of footprints and handprints impressed into cliff walls and caves by Buddhist spiritual masters and adepts, who spend lifetimes meditating in the mountains.
"His Holiness is very casual and is often seen wearing sandals and flip-flops," said Mr. Gyatso, who put in two decades as an advertising art director in New York and now paints in Colorado. "It is an indication of the times for us as Tibetan refugees, the predicament and its difficulties. I very much wanted to capture the sense that he is walking on the earth right now."
For "The Missing Peace," which opens at the U.C.L.A. Fowler Museum of Cultural History on Sunday, contemporary artists stretched themselves to fulfill an unusual assignment: tackling a richly detailed worldview that has few correlates in the West.
"We live in a very deep, very complex interconnectedness," the Dalai Lama has said. In his talks, he speaks of the suffering caused by clinging to self, and the antidote, which is compassion. He has warned that "these mental transformations take time and are not easy."
Asked to consider the Dalai Lama, some artists see his feet; some his face. Some see nonviolence and environmental activism, or moral discipline. Others see themselves, and their own agendas and issues.
The portraits, solicited over the last two years by the Committee of 100 for Tibet, the Dalai Lama Foundation and the curator Randy Rosenberg, range from the literal to the metaphoric.
In 1998 Richard Avedon photographed the Dalai Lama among his monks, rising ever so slightly over them like Mount Everest among the high peaks. Last year, Chuck Close met him briefly in a New York hotel room and, in a large-format Polaroid photograph (remade for the show as a digital pigment print), caught a familiar half-smile in formation. Seeking an emblematic image, the Swiss artist Sylvie Fleury borrowed his shoes and photographed their "aura."
The rest of the works run the gamut of installations, paintings, sculpture, videos, cartoons, performance, music, prints, films and tapestries. Most of the artists would be at home in the international biennial circuits, and some are only peripherally spiritual.
Bill Viola and Kira Perov, who traveled last year to Dharamsala for a private interview, have created "Bodies of Light," a video installation, and, in the entrance room of the exhibition, a video of the Dalai Lama praying for the welfare of all beings. He says in part: "As long as space endures, and for as long as living beings remain, until then may I too abide, to dispel the misery of the world."
The artist Katarina Wong, who has a master's degree in theology, made casts of fingertips of friends and family members for the show, arranging them in patterns to express the flow of people's lives and their interconnectedness over time and space.
Richard Gere is represented by his photographs of people of the Himalayas; Laurie Anderson, in an installation projecting images of herself and her dog, references 9/11 and her new habit of looking up at the sky.
The performance artist Marina Abramovic was choreographing hundreds of monks for a festival of sacred music in India in the early 1980's when she met the Dalai Lama and began filming him. "It was so easy to meet the Dalai Lama in those days," she said in a telephone interview. "Today it is impossible. He left a very deep impression." Her wall-size video installation, "At the Waterfall," displays more than 100 heads of meditating Tibetan monks and nuns murmuring mantras. The voices merge like a silver river, and visitors, sitting in deck chairs, can let the cascade pour over them.
"His spirit is elevated," Ms. Abramovic said. "It helps in my work, to elevate the spirit of the audience and myself." Most important for her, she says, is his generosity and kindness. "It brings you to tears just about every time."
The exhibition is loosely organized around topics: the Tibetan land and people, compassion, enlightenment, human rights, peace and nonviolence, interdependence and impermanence.
The artists bring their personal histories and personalities to the task. Tri Huu Luu, who escaped Vietnam during the war with Cambodia, was raised a Buddhist but discovered Buddhism's importance to him only after reaching the United States. In photographing the backs of the heads of monks and nuns, he conveys their detachment from the individuality of a face and identity, and an indifference to beauty or success, as well as their commonality.
Another Vietnamese artist, Binh Danh, imprints photographs onto plant leaves, registering ephemeral images of his family, soldiers and people lost to death.
The moody spiritualism in a six-foot-tall print of a butterfly chrysalis by the British-born artist Adam Fuss, in stark translucent white as though suffused by inner light, seemingly asks viewers to measure their own capacity for transfiguration.
A wall of charts and texts by the California artists Newton and Helen Harrison documents ecological disasters at the source of major rivers that run from the Himalayas. Practicing what they call "eco-systemic thinking" - "You see a whole system, internalize a system and speak for its well-being," Mr. Harrison said - they lament the million square miles of newly made desert in Tibet, and the $54 billion in timber profits that have flowed into China.
Their project, titled "Tibet Is the High Ground," is intended to raise awareness in the countries downriver, and to form a political entity that will force China to open an environmental dialogue.
The couple don't consider themselves Buddhists. "I'm not an 'ist,' " Mr. Harrison said in an interview at the artists' hillside studio-bungalow complex in Davis, Calif.
Their project gained momentum after they learned of the Dalai Lama's plan for a Peace Park in the Himalayas. They wrote him a letter and he responded at great length; now his teachings inform their projects.
Up the California coast, in Half Moon Bay, the filmmakers and designers David and Hi-Jin Hodge recounted how they discovered itinerant Tibetan monks making a sand mandala in a tent in town. "I said, 'What's a mandala?' " Mr. Hodge recalled.
Mesmerized by the monks' exacting application of streams of colored sand through tiny funnels, they returned every day. At the end of 10 days of creating exquisite beauty, the monks dragged a brush through the sand and returned it to the ocean, stunning onlookers. "It was arresting because, being artists, people who make things, to spend all that time and say, 'O.K., let's burn it ' " Mr. Hodge said.
"We were struggling with impermanent things in our own life," Ms. Hodge said. They had just put Mr. Hodge's mother in a home for the elderly, she explained, and were getting rid of a lot of things she had been attached to. "We thought, why don't we interview other people about the topic of impermanence? It was a way of researching."
The result is their first video installation. They started off intending to conduct just a few interviews but ended up with 122. As word of the project spread, a maharaja showed up at their door; his voice and image now join that of a Jamaican window washer, a Web master, a 12-year-old boy, a Trappist monk, an ex-gang member, a Presbyterian minister and others on 12 small video iPods perched atop tripods arranged in a circle.
Mr. Hodge, a jazz musician, said he was deeply saddened by the death of the saxophonist Stan Getz, who was a friend. "Why does it have to be this way?" he asked at the time. His project has helped him become more accepting - a message, he said, "you could apply to everyday life."
Or perhaps everyday life itself is the message, brought to new awareness.
The Missing Peace
U.C.L.A. Fowler Museum of Cultural History
''The Missing Peace: Artists Consider the Dalai Lama'' is on view at the Fowler Museum in Los Angeles from Sunday through Sept. 10. It will travel to the Loyola University Museum of Art in Chicago in the fall and the Rubin Museum of Art in New York next spring.
Copyright © 2006 by The New York Times Co. Reprinted with permission.
May 11, 2006 L.A. City Beat Nice Visual
March 22, 2006 - San Jose Mercury News "A Spur to Peace"
January 23, 2006 - American Public Media's Weekend America covers David and Hi-Jin Hodge's contribution to TMPP.