A Shrine for Tibet is the latest study of Tibetan sacred art, primarily sculpture and tangka scroll icon paintings by art historian Marylin Rhie and Tibetan scholar Robert Thurman. The focus of the book is on Tibetan masterpieces from the Ganden Renaissance of the 15th century up to the building of the Potala Palace in the 17th century and the flowering of Manchu and Mongolian art in the 18th.

The Alice S. Kandell Collection was assembled with the purpose of creating an authentic Tibetan Buddhist shrine room, complete with ritual arrangements and equipment according to the practice of Tibetan and Mongolian lamas of the highest level. The collection is unique in its presentation of the art in the context of a working shrine, regarded as a doorway into the higher world, a laboratory in which the higher world is designed, and a refuge where the higher world is enjoyed and brought into the ordinary world to be shared with suffering beings.

Illustrated with the photography of John Bigelow Taylor, A Shrine for Tibet includes color plates and full color foldouts of the collection and the shrine in various arrangements.

Marylin M. Rhie is Jessie Wells Post Professor of Art and East Asian Studies at Smith College in Northampton, Masachusetts, where she has taught since 1974. She has been awarded research grants form the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Smithsonian Institution, traveling extensively in Asia for her research on the Buddhist art of various Asian civilizations. She is among the most insightful elucidators of Tibetan art. She curated and co-authored the catalogue for the world-wide, milestone exhibit, Wisdom and Compassion, 1991-1998, as well as for the catalogue and exhibits of Worlds of Transformation, 1999-2004. Robert A. F. Thurman is Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University in New York City, where he has taught since 1988. He holds the first endowed chair in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in America. He received Upasika ordination in 1964 and Vajracharya ordination in 1971, both from His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He is president of Tibet House US, founded in 1987 under the patronage of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to preserve the endangered civilization of Tibet � and he began its Repatriation Collection of Tibetan Art. Among the foremost Buddhologists and interpreters of Tibet and its Buddhist civilization; he is also an ordained Buddhist layman

	Contents: A Shrine for Tibet - The Alice S. Kandell Collection
	FOREWORDS	vii
	H.H. The Dalai Lama
	Robert A.F. Thurman
	COLLECTOR'S PREFACE	xi
	Alice S. Kandell
	AUTHOR PREFACES	xii
	Marylin M. Rhie
	Robert A.F. Thurman
	Acknowledgments	xiv
	Note on Transcriptions and Terminology	xiv
	THE TIBETAN SHRINE	1
	Robert A.F. Thurman
	FROM GANDEN TO DOLONNOR TO WUTAISHAN - Regional Schools of Tibetan Buddhist Sculpture (Fifteenth to Eighteenth Centuries)	15
	Marylin M. Rhie
	A SHRINE FOR TIBET	49
	Marylin M. Rhie and Robert A.F. Thurman
	I. Buddhas of the Three Times	50
	II. Lamas and Spiritual Mentors	96
	III. Female Deities	136
	IV. Cosmic Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and Pure Lands	166
	V. Adepts, Archetype Deities, and Protectors	196
	VI. Ritual Implements	228
	VII. Cultural Objects	252
	BIBLIOGRAPHY	287
	INDEX	291