The "Divine Demons: Wrathful Deities of Buddhist Art" exhibition was housed entirely in this room.
My friend Emily and I caught the exhibition “Divine Demons: Wrathful Deities of Buddhist Art” at the Norton Simon on Saturday, just before it closed. For its dramatic title and its prominence on the Museum’s website, the exhibition of paintings and objects from Tibet was startlingly small and nondescript, all of it contained in an alcove-like room off the entrance to the South and Southeast Asian collections on the lower level.
The objects in the exhibition were marvelous, but their display didn't seem to acknowledge that.
The paintings and objects in the exhibition were marvelous: magical, intricate, and steeped in symbolism. The labels told you a little bit of the fascinating stories behind them: that the dagger was actually modeled after a tent peg, that the squashed figures repeatedly trampled by demons represented ignorance. The introductory text suggested that wrathful deities were appropriate for the harsh climate and hardscrabble life of a high mountain environment. But the way the pieces were displayed didn’t evoke a sense of magic or meaning. It felt like they were stuck in that alcove for convenience rather than placed there thoughtfully.
In the Norton Simon's permanent collection of South and Southeast Asian Art, a photomural gives this Cambodian statue context.
I was excited about seeing this exhibit, and I would have liked to see that excitement reflected back in the way the objects were displayed. Perhaps if the room had some sort of entryway, something you had to step through, it would have felt like a differentiated place, and its smallness wouldn’t have mattered. Perhaps there could have been some contextual photographs, like the ones art museums seem to be using more often to show you where a statue or chunk of architectural detail might have originally been housed. Or maybe simply spacing the objects further apart would have done it.
We saw the Hiroshige: Visions of Japan exhibition at the Norton Simon as well, and although the design for that exhibition is simple, there is a definite intention there that seems to acknowledge the significance of the art.
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