Realms of the Dharma

When Pratapaditya Pal arrived in Los Angeles in 1970 to head the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s new department of Indian and Islamic Art, he began broadening the museum’s collection both culturally and spiritually. Over the next twenty-five years, drawing on his vast scholarly knowledge, boundless energy, and relationships with collectors, Pal significantly increased its Himalayan and Islamic collections and transformed LACMA’s modest holdings of Indian and Southeast Asian art into one of the preeminent repositories of its kind in the country. For visitors who associate LACMA with modern and contemporary art, the depth and range of its Buddhist art may be particularly surprising. 

As the museum prepares to open its new main building, “Realms of the Dharma: Buddhist Art Across Asia” (on view through July 12, 2026) brings together LACMA’s holdings of Buddhist art in a single space for the first time. Curated by Stephen Little, the head of Chinese and Korean art, and Tushara Bindu Gude, a former curator of LACMA’s South and Southeast Asian art, the exhibition features approximately 180 paintings, sculptures, ritual objects, and sacred texts—mostly from the museum’s permanent collection.

Upon entering the exhibition, visitors encounter on their left a tall, imposing figure in gray schist, wearing a toga-like robe and bearing a thoughtful expression. He represents Avalokiteshvara, a bodhisattva—a compassionate being who postpones their own final buddhahood and final nirvana to save all sentient beings from suffering. Bodhisattvas feature prominently in Mahayana Buddhism, which began to spread throughout much of Asia almost 2,000 years ago, around the same time that Buddhist teachings were first written down in sutras. This was also when the earliest images of the Buddha and other deities appeared in northern India and Gandhara (present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan), where such figures were sculpted around 200 CE. Executed in a Greco-Roman style typical of the region, the bodhisattva wears princely garb and jewelry symbolizing his continued presence in the material realm, in contrast to more well-known images of the Buddha, whose simple monk’s robe signals his liberation from it. Acquired in 1983, the sculpture remains one of the most notable Buddhist works in LACMA’s collection. 

Until recently, the largest collections of Buddhist art in the United States were held by East Coast institutions—the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (all founded in the 1870s), and the National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, D.C. (founded in the 1920s)—reflecting the concentration of wealthy collectors in those cities. The West Coast, and California in particular, has far younger institutions, many established in the mid-20th century as the region grew in population and wealth. The Asian Art Museum in San Francisco built an impressive Buddhist art collection thanks to the generosity of founder Avery Brundage in the 1960s, but LACMA, founded in 1961, has been a relative latecomer, despite southern California’s large and diverse Asian immigrant communities. 

In 1969, LACMA director Kenneth Donahue was considering the museum’s first significant acquisition of Indian art—235 works from the collection of Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck, collectors and dealers active across many regions of the world. He consulted Pal, an Indian scholar specializing in South Asian art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the following year persuaded him to move to Los Angeles to head the museum’s new department of Indian and Islamic Art; Pal later became the senior curator of Indian and Southeast Asian art. Armed with two PhDs, a tireless work ethic, and relationships with major collectors, including Anna Bing Arnold and Joan Pavlensky, as well as institutional support from the Ahmanson Foundation, Pal oversaw a dramatic expansion of the collection. During the 1970s, he also helped collector Norton Simon build his extensive South Asian art holding, now at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena. By the time Pal left LACMA, in 1995, the museum’s Indian, Islamic, and Southeast Asian art collection had grown to 4,000 works.

Among the works acquired in 1969 was an early Kashmiri seated buddha dating to around 725–750 CE. Cast in brass with inlaid silver, the figure exemplifies the fine metalwork of the Himalayan region, renowned for its exquisite Buddhist and Hindu deity figures crafted in copper, bronze, and brass, often embellished with silver or gold. Emanating the stillness and strength befitting a being who has transcended this realm and attained nirvana, the buddha wears a kind, serene expression. The sculpture depicts either the historical Buddha Shakyamuni or the cosmic buddha Vairochana; both are shown holding their hands in the “turning the wheel of the law” gesture (Skt.: dharmachakra mudra) and seated in full lotus position (dhyana asana). He sits on an openwork lion throne, a symbol of royalty that underscores his spiritual sovereignty, with a demigod (yaksha) as its center, flanked by two rearing griffins.

A seated buddha from over a thousand years later in Laos or northern Thailand offers an instructive regional comparison. Cast from a copper alloy and detailed with rock crystal and obsidian, the figure is identifiable as the historical Buddha Shakyamuni by his right hand in the earth-touching gesture (bhumisparsha mudra), which commemorates the moment of his enlightenment, when he called the earth to witness his victory over the demon Mara. The image displays localized features—a broader nose, a simpler treatment of the robe and throne—but its most distinctive regional variation is the ornate, elongated cranial protuberance, or ushnisha, a physical mark signifying the Buddha’s transcendent wisdom. This “flaming ushnisha” is characteristic of Thai and Laotian buddha figures from the 14th century onward and is relatively rare in Western museum collections. This figure was donated to LACMA by Michael Phillips, a noted collector of Himalayan, Indian, and Southeast Asian Buddhist art, and, perhaps less expectedly, the Oscar-winning producer behind The Sting and Taxi Driver. 

One of the most spectacular works of art in the exhibition is a 15th-century Tibetan painting depicting the Buddhist deities Chakrasamvara and Vajravarahi in sexual embrace. Chakrasamvara (meaning “Wheel of Bliss”) symbolizes the blissful state of perfect wisdom and is among the most important deities in Vajrayana, the esoteric form of Mahayana Buddhism that evolved between the 5th and 7th centuries and became the dominant tradition in Tibet. Mantras, visualizations, and mandalas are central practices in this tradition, and paintings and sculptures of deities in sexual embrace serve as visualization tools for practitioners. The embrace, known in Tibetan as yab-yum, or “father-mother,” represents the union of wisdom (the female principle) and compassion (the male) that is held to be necessary for enlightenment. Despite its age, the painting’s colors remain strikingly vibrant, a testament to the skill of its maker, a Newar artist from Nepal working in Tibet.

LACMA’s Buddhist art collection also encompasses paintings, sculptures, and calligraphy from East Asia, with some particularly outstanding examples from Japan. Among them is an elegant wooden sculpture of the bodhisattva Kshitigarbha (Jp.: Jizo), dating to the Heian period (794–1185) and standing over six feet tall—remarkable for its refined features, scale, and excellent condition. Shaved-headed like a monk and carrying a monk’s staff and a sacred jewel, Jizo is one of the most beloved deities in Japan, venerated for his protection of children both in this realm and in the afterlife, including hell. Sculpted from a single block of wood and originally coated with pigments, the figure exudes the compassion of a bodhisattva while projecting the gentle, humble presence of a buddha.

In contrast to Jizo’s serene composure, a monumental ink painting of the monk Bodhidharma projects an altogether more formidable presence. Bodhidharma is credited with transmitting meditation—known in Sanskrit as dhyana, but more famously by its Japanese name, Zen—from India to China. According to legend, he was so determined to attain enlightenment through meditation that he cut off his eyelids to avoid falling asleep, which is why images of him typically show large, buggy eyes beneath a scowling brow. Unlike other Buddhist traditions, Zen does not employ statues or paintings of deities; instead, landscape paintings, calligraphic inscriptions, and portraits of Zen teachers served as focal points for meditation. In this large and dramatic portrait, Japanese artist Kawanabe Kyōsai (1831–89), known for his paintings of demons and monsters and his lively woodblock prints, captures the legendary master’s fierce concentration with swift, bold brushwork and careful shading. Donated in 2024 by Etsuko and Joe Price, who also supported the building of LACMA’s Japanese Pavilion, it is among the most recent additions to the museum’s Buddhist art holdings.

Until now, many of the works discussed here have been displayed separately in regional gallery settings. “Realms of the Dharma” brings them together for the first time, assembling LACMA’s holdings from across Asia—India, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Nepal, Kashmir, Tibet, China, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Myanmar, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos—in a single, wide-ranging survey that demonstrates just how remarkable the museum’s collection has become. That this is possible at all is part of Pratapaditya Pal’s legacy of bringing exceptional examples of Asian spiritual art to Los Angeles—home to one of the most diverse communities in the world today, with practitioners of Buddhism and other Asian spiritual traditions from Asia and the West. It seems fitting that the city’s great public art museum has quietly become one of the country’s most significant repositories of the art those traditions inspired, and that an exhibition like “Realms of the Dharma” makes that visible.