'Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room' finds permanent home at Minneapolis Institute of Art

More than 200 objects dating from the 1300s to the early 1900s are the gift of New York collector Alice S. Kandell.

By Alicia Eler Star Tribune

September 17, 2024 — 6:30am

New York-based collector Alice S. Kandell can't exactly pinpoint what drew her to Tibetan art, but she suspects it might have been the immersive experience she had in the 1960s, when she traveled to Sikkim — a state in northeast India bordered by Bhutan, Tibet and Nepal.

That and the fact that her college friend became the queen of Sikkim, and she was invited to the coronation.

No, that isn't a typo. Her friend happened to meet a man in Darjeeling who was the crown prince of Sikkim. The two fell in love and married.

When Kandell received an invitation to their crowning as king and queen, she knew she had to go, but she was in graduate school for psychology at Harvard and taking time off was frowned upon. When she asked her adviser if she could go, he said: "When fantasy becomes reality, a member of the Harvard psychology department should be there to witness it!"

What began as a trip around the world evolved into a fascination with the religious objects and art of Tibet that refugees were forced to sell to pay for their journey into exile during the Chinese invasion. Kandell was taken by the artwork, and over the years she amassed enough objects to make a shrine in her New York City apartment. It became too much, and she knew that even though she bought it, it wasn't really hers. When she bought a work, she promised the people she would keep it and that it wouldn't end up on the secondary art market.

The first room went to the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art, and the second "Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room" is now home at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Some 200 objects — including gilt-bronze sculptures, paintings (thangkas), silk hangings, carpets, prayer beads, peacock feathers, silver bells and more created in Tibet between the 1300s and 1900s — invite visitors to experience them.

Inside the shrine

A low and consistent humming chant from Buddhist monks pulses, audible from the next room. A tilted rectangle of light guides visitors through the open door portal. Inside, the shrine centerpiece is a gilt bronze sculpture of Akshobhya (Shakyamuni) portraying him just moments after his enlightenment. Other sculptures flank him, such as Standing Maitreya, a bodhisattva, a spiritual being on the path to enlightenment, the female deity Green Tara, a personification of wisdom, Vajradhara, a manifestation of Buddha's teachings, and more.

Painted dragons are mounted on the tops of ceiling beams. Brightly painted thangkas filled with repeating patterns of the deities fill the compact shrine. One thangka has an image of Green Tara repeated 526 times, a gesture toward her limitless compassion for those who are suffering.

"The creation of all of these things is an act of faith, and it's designed to accrue karma, just the creation of an image," said Mia Chief Curator Matthew Welch, who is responsible for bringing the shrine room to Minneapolis.

The space is filled with sacred objects and sticks of unburned incense.

"This evokes a sacred space, but it is not a sacred space," he said. "We haven't had it consecrated, we are not maintaining it as a consecrated space, but it's meant to evoke that. It does give a context to these objects. You see that even in Western museums that have rich enough objects, like sometimes they'll do a kind of cathedral-like room."

The Twin Cities is home to 5,000 Tibetans, the second-largest population outside of New York City.

Gelek Namgyal, vice president of the Tibetan American Foundation of Minnesota, considers the shrine room a space of education for Tibetans and non-Tibetans alike.

"The shrine is to honor Buddha," he said. "The shrine is to guide one's self through enlightenment and to remind of the practice of Buddha and meditation, and also to remind of life and death."

The shrine isn't for showing off your wealth or increasing any level of pride. At the core of it are the Tibetan values of love and compassion.

The first piece of Tibetan art that Kandell bought didn't come from an auction house or an art gallery but came rather as an act of compassion. When she was in Pokhara, Nepal, in the 1960s, she met a Tibetan Khampa fighter. This was in the midst of the Chinese invasion of Tibet, and he'd come down from the mountains.

"He had this prayer box and his father said he could sell it as long as there was no hope for returning to Tibet," she said. "He wanted $100 for it."

She felt conflicted about it because she was only in college and couldn't really afford it, but bought it anyway.

"It was a bittersweet experience, to take it away from him, but I knew he was going to part with it, and it meant the end of Tibet for him," she said. "I liked that piece. I gave it away to the Smithsonian."

She drew upon the Buddhist concept of nonattachment. If attachment is the root of all suffering, people must let go of their ego's grasp at material objects.

"Nonattachment," she added. "What can you do?"