AMHERST, Mass. — In conjunction with a yearlong exhibit of Buddhist scroll paintings at Amherst College’s Mead Art Museum, the Frost Library will exhibit The Dhyani Buddhas, a series of paintings by New Salem artist Joan Bredin-Price.
Bredin-Price will give a talk at the opening reception on Friday, Oct. 14, at 7 p.m. in the periodicals area of Frost Library. The exhibit will be on display in the Frost Library mezzanine through January 2012.
The exhibit is composed of 10 43-inch-by-63-inch paintings depicting the male and female aspects of the Buddha in Tibetan Buddhism.
“The Dhyani Buddhas represent the forces of Buddha nature that operate on a celestial level,” the artist said, adding that they may be meditated on as antidotes to the “human poisons” of anger, ignorance, pride, desire and jealousy.
“It’s a perfect loop,” Bredin-Price said of the exhibit’s coming to Amherst. She was first introduced to Tibetan Buddhism by former Amherst College professor Robert Thurman, who taught in the college’s religion department between 1973 and 1988. The paintings, which took more than three years to complete, were last on display at Smith College in 2008. The artist is currently looking for a permanent home for them, preferably in a site used for meditation.
This is one in a series of events connected with the ongoing exhibit Picturing Enlightenment: Thangka in the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College, which marks the completion of an extensive project to conserve the Mead’s collection of scroll paintings of Buddhist figures. Thurman, now the Jey Tsong Kappa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Studies at Columbia University, and Marilyn Rhie, the Jesse Wells Post Professor of Art and Professor of East Asian Studies at Smith College, will open the Mead events with a keynote conversation on Sept. 16.
For more information about Bredin-Price and a gallery of her works, visit www.bredinprice.com.