According to the Buddhist chronicles, when the Buddha died, he broke free from the cycle of rebirths and attained nirvana – absolute release from karmic rebirth. Explore how regional artistic traditions through Asia depict the Death of Buddha, one of the most enduring images in Buddhist tradition.

Learn more about both the universality and variations of the Death of Buddha subject as a reflection of regional Buddhist religious practices throughout Asia. Moderated by Dr. Vicki Kwon, curators of ROM’s Asia departments will explore the topic, using highlighted artworks from ROM’s global art collections as examples.

Speakers:

Dr. Vicki Sung-yeon Kwon

Vicki Sung-yeon Kwon joined ROM in November 2022 as Associate Curator of Korean Art and Culture, a position funded by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism of the Republic of Korea. Dr. Kwon is an art historian of modern and contemporary art with a focus on Korean art and visual culture, in relation to transnationalism, multiple modernisms, global contemporary art histories, and feminist activism. At ROM, Dr. Kwon is responsible for developing exhibitions and programs introducing dynamic art and culture of Korea.

Wen-chien Cheng

Wen-chien Cheng is the Louise Hawley Stone Chair of East Asian Art at ROM. Currently cross appointed with the Department of Fine Arts and East Asia Studies at the University of Toronto, she has held postdoctoral fellowships at the J. Paul Getty Foundation and the Smithsonian Institution. Dr. Cheng is responsible for developing a dynamic program of collection-based scholarship through acquisitions and permanent and temporary exhibitions. Her major area of research is premodern Chinese painting, and her research approach is a contextualized study of visual culture.

Deepali Dewan

Deepali Dewan is the Dan Mishra Senior Curator of Global South Asia at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto and an Associate Professor (status only) in the Department of Art History at the University of Toronto. Her research spans issues of colonial, modern and contemporary visual culture in South Asia and the South Asian diaspora. She has curated and published for over twenty years on the history of photography and its critical historiographies and contemporary art as it explores ways of being and knowing in the world.

Akiko Takesue

Akiko Takesue is the Bishop White Committee Associate Curator of Japanese Art & Culture at ROM. She is responsible for researching and developing ROM’s collection of Japanese art and culture, currently numbering approximately 10,000 objects and ranging in date from the Jōmon period (10,000–300 BCE) to the present day. Her research interest lies in the reception and representation of Japanese art outside Japan from the 19th century, and how historical discrepancies in the idea of “Japanese art” have been carried on until today.

Event captured on January 24, 2024.