Borders and Crossroads: The Buddhist Art of Ancient Gandhara

May 8 – October 7, 2001

The Buddhist art of ancient Andhra (today encompassing parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northwest India) was a singular cultural achievement, one that co-mingled a Greco-Roman artistic vocabulary with indigenous Indian sculptural and religious traditions.

As such, it is a fertile arena for examining artistic florescence along geographic and cultural borders, in which foreign and native traditions mingle, fuse, and transcend their origins as they coalesce into a new hybrid visual culture. This exhibition highlighted recent gifts of Gandharan sculpture from the Manilow collection and included a selection of sculpture from the Smart Museum's collection of classical Greek and Roman antiquities and later East Asian Buddhist paintings and sculpture.