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MUSEUM

•  Over 1,000 artifacts
•  More than 600 statues and thangka paintings
•  Several hundred reliquaries and other ritual objects
•  Major exhibits including mandalas of Avalokiteshvara and Arya Tara

The Museum, located on the first floor of the Library, originated as a repository for art and artifacts devotedly carried into exile, often at great personal risk, and offered to His Holiness the Dalai Lama. It was laid out in consultation with the National Museum of India and opened to the public in 1974. The museum has expanded steadily since those early days and today exhibits one of the most important collections of Tibetan art in the world. It has a rich collection of around 1,000 objects, both secular and religious.

Major exhibits include a handwritten official decree issued by the sixth Dalai Lama (c.1699), a three-dimensional carved wooden mandala of Avalokiteshvara (the Buddha of Compassion) and a thread-cross mandala of Arya Tara. The museum also houses a bronze statue of Avalokiteshvara commissioned by the thirteenth Dalai Lama, said to stand as tall as he did, and a contemporary life-sized statue of Je Tsongkhapa.

Also exhibited are many other important and sacred objects depicting the religious and secular life of traditional Tibet . Statues and thangkas (traditional scroll paintings) of various buddhas and other manifestations are on display, as well as traditional Tibetan artifacts of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The museum also exhibits a unique collection of miniatures of some of Tibet 's great monuments. These include an intricate butter sculpture of the Potala Place , a wooden replica of the Jokhang in Lhasa ( Tibet 's central cathedral) and a set of wood-carved Choeten Namgye (eight stupas, each depicting a different event in the Buddha's life).

For more information museum[at]ltwa.net (Mrs. Tenzin Choezom)