Death is not the End

Memento Mori Prayer Bead; Germany or the Netherlands, 1500-1550, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine; Sarvavid Album Leaf #24: Rainbow Light, Inner Mongolia; 18th–19th century; Collection of the City of Antwerp – MAS Leg Bone Trumpet (kangling); Tibet; 18th-19th century; human bone, copper, coral, leather; Rubin Museum of Art.

Death Is Not the End is a cross-cultural exhibition that explores notions of death and afterlife through the art of Tibetan Buddhism and Christianity. During a time of great global turmoil, loss, and uncertainty, the exhibition invites contemplation of the universal human condition of impermanence and the desire to continue to exist.

The exhibition features prints, oil paintings, bone ornaments, thangka paintings, sculptures, illuminated manuscripts, and ritual items, and brings together 58 objects spanning 12 centuries from the Rubin Museum’s collection alongside artworks on loan from private collections and major institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Morgan Library and Museum, Museum aan de Stroom in Antwerp, Wellcome Collection in London, Nelson Atkins Museum in Kansas City, San Antonio Museum of Art, and more.

The exhibition is organized around three major themes: the Human Condition, or the shared understanding of our mortality in this world; States In-Between, or the concepts of limbo, purgatory, and bardo; and (After)life, focusing on resurrection, ideas of transformation, and heaven.