To celebrate it's 60th anniversary, the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art in New York will be hosting until December 31 2008 an impressive exhibition dedicated to Jacques Marchais, the woman who made this museum a reality, showcasing how her passion for collecting had slowly taken over his life. "From Staten Island to Shangri-La: The Collecting Life of Jacques Marchais" is thus a tribute and a cultural event of great importance, as it presents in detail how much Tibetan art meant for the collector.
Some of the best pieces are those of Himalayan art, from the museum's collections, as well some journals and writings of Marchais, rare books, a few dozen pieces of memorabilia, a small collection of historic photos documenting the building of the Museum.
Besides simply exhibiting the best of the museum's treasures, the curators have tried - and succedeed - in presenting the little known but fascinating life of Jacques Marchais (1887 - 1948), an untold story of a woman for whom Tibetan art was an obsession and a passion. Despite adversities, she managed to found a Center for the study and sharing of the old artistic, cultural and philosophical traditions of Tibet and the Himalayan region. Due to her persistence and the "fury" that she showed, the museum in New York City now has one of the largest and earliest collections of Tibetan art outside of Asia. Also, for Jacques Marchais the building was important, as she built it according to her own vision, the museum being a replica of a mountain monastery in the Himalaya, yet the architecture blends perfectly with the surroundings.
The exhibits have been shown in a chronological order, detailing the life of Jacques Marchais since her early days, when she was a child actress to her discovering the first Tibetan works of art in New York, in the interwar period, concluding with her struggle to build a center for Tibetan art in the US.
2007-07-03
