CLEVELAND, Ohio - Sometimes in the art world, when you give, you get.
That's the case at the Cleveland Museum of Art where a new exhibit that opened Saturday focuses on a nearly 5-ton slice of a medieval Cambodian temple wall carved with a bas-relief sculpture of the 10-armed Buddhist Bodhisattva of Compassion, Lokeshvara.

The 12th-century wall, standing 9 feet high and 10.5 feet wide, most likely depicts Lokeshvara offering redemption to the souls of Khmer warriors who died in wars against the neighboring Cham people of present-day South Vietnam, said Sonya Rhie Mace, the museum's curator of Indian and Southeast Asian art.

The wall is on loan as the result of an agreement following the Cleveland museum's decision in 2015 to return to Cambodia a magnificent sculpture of the Hindu monkey god Hanuman...
http://www.cleveland.com/arts/index.ssf ... museu.html

Cleveland Museum of Art embarks on radical reconstruction of Cambodian Krishna statue (photos)
17 December 2017
CLEVELAND, Ohio - The Cleveland Museum of Art's seventh-century Cambodian statue of the Hindu god Krishna, a broken masterpiece painstakingly reassembled in 1978, is ready for a yearlong radical makeover in the museum's conservation lab.

The goal of the project, funded by a $70,000 Bank of America Art Conservation Project grant, is to dismantle and reconstruct the sculpture's 11 pieces to re-create its correct pose for the first time since the fragments were unearthed in stages starting more than a century ago.

The pose matters because it will help reveal the work's true religious meaning at its time of origin -- a pivotal moment in the development of Hinduism.

"It's going to be fun," Sonya Rhie Mace, the museum's curator of Indian and Southeast Asian art, said during a recent interview in the museum's conservation lab.

French archaeologists first discovered the head and torso of the Krishna in 1912 outside a sacred cave on a hillside at Phnom Da, the earliest monumental Hindu temple complex in Cambodia...
More here: http://www.cleveland.com/arts/index.ssf ... krish.html

Krishna statue photos.

The original reconstruction

As displayed at the Cleveland Museum of Art

Cleveland Museum of Art announces ticket availability for “Revealing Krishna’' exhibit starts today for members, general public on Sept. 20
Updated: 1:20 p.m. | Published: 5:00 a.m.

Krishna Lifting Mount Govardhan after 2020 restoration (detail), c. 600. Southern Cambodia, Takeo Province, Phnom Da. Sandstone; 203.1 x 68 x 55.5 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund, 1973.106Cleveland Museum of Art
By Steven Litt, cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Cleveland Museum of Art announced Tuesday that timed tickets for a major fall exhibition, “Revealing Krishna: Journey to Cambodia’s Sacred Mountain,’’ will be made available Tuesday for members, and for non-members on Monday, Sept. 20.

The museum said in a news release that it recommends reserving tickets by visiting the “Revealing Krishna’' webpage on its website, by calling 216-421-7350, or by visiting one of its on-site ticket desks.

“Revealing Krishna” will run from Nov. 14, 2021, to Jan. 30, 2022.

Prices for non-member adults are $15. For non-member seniors, college students with ID, and children ages 12 to 17 the price is $12. Museum members and children under 11 are free. Member guests are $8.
(General admission to the museum is always free.)

The Krishna exhibition will center on the long-awaited restoration of the museum’s monumental, 7th-century Cambodian sculpture, “Krishna Lifting Mount Govardhan,’’ which the museum acquired in 1973.

The Cleveland Krishna will be displayed alongside nine other large-scale early stone sculptures from Phnom Da, a temple complex near the nearby ancient Khmer city of Angkor Borei.

The sculptures will be loaned by the National Museum of Cambodia, the Angkor Borei Museum and the Musée national des arts asiatiques–Guimet in Paris.

The show grew out of a 2015 Memorandum of Understanding and Cultural Cooperation Agreement between the Cleveland museum and the National Museum of Cambodia.

The agreements followed the museum’s decision in 2015 to return to Cambodia a sculpture of the Hindu monkey god, Hanuman, that it purchased in good faith in 1982. The Cleveland museum later discovered through research that the sculpture probably had been looted between 1968 and 1972, during the civil war that preceded the Khmer Rouge revolution and the bloody Pol Pot regime.

Collaborative activities fostered by the agreements included the 2017 loan to the Cleveland museum of a nearly 5-ton slice from the temple wall at the medieval Cambodian shrine of Banteay Chhmar with a bas-relief sculpture depicting the 10-armed Buddhist Bodhisattva of Compassion, Lokeshvara.

The National Museum of Cambodia also sent fragments of the Cleveland Krishna to the Cleveland Museum of Art, where they have become part of the new Krishna restoration. The Cleveland museum also provided the National Museum of Cambodia with pieces belonging to a sculpture in its collection.
Full article: https://www.cleveland.com/news/2021/09/ ... pt-20.html

Ancient Krishnas are reunited with their body parts
A collaboration between the Cleveland Museum of Art and the National Museum of Cambodia revealed that each boy god had been given the other’s limbs during earlier conservation work
Nancy Kenney
12 November 2021
[excerpt]

For decades, it has been the star of the Indian and Southeast Asian collection at the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA): a mammoth sandstone statue of the Hindu boy god Krishna, serenely hoisting a mountain to shelter villagers from a deluge of rain unleashed by a vengeful deity.

Carved around AD600 for veneration in a manmade cave at the mountain of Phnom Da in southern Cambodia, Krishna Lifting Mount Govardhan is heralded as one of the first major sculptures in Khmer civilisation, says Sonya Rhie Mace, the museum’s curator of Indian and Southeast Asian art. Acquired by the CMA in 1973, it reflects influences imported from India as well as “an explosion of artistic inspiration and skill” in Cambodia before the centre of creativity shifted to the northwest in the Angkor period, she says.

Yet over the last four years, the Krishna has been radically transformed. Most strikingly, it no longer stands securely on two feet: in a restoration guided by intensive research and the latest scanning and 3D modelling technology, the sculpture has been shorn of a thigh, two calves and feet that had been appended in a painstaking yet evidently misguided 1978-79 reconstruction effort.

Conservators have also added a large upper section showing the figure’s left hand and the top of the stone niche in which the sculpture resided, more fully evoking Krishna’s mythological feat of lifting the mountain. The changes resulted from deep collaboration, including swaps of fragments, with the National Museum of Cambodia in Phnom Penh, which owns another sandstone version of Krishna Lifting Mount Govardhan from Phnom Da and recently finished restoring it.

It’s a co-operation story, it’s a diplomacy story, it’s a conservation story

The detective work that led to the Cleveland sculpture’s transformation and the winding saga of its travels are the focus of a groundbreaking exhibition opening on 14 November at the CMA, Revealing Krishna: Journey to Cambodia’s Sacred Mountain (until 30 January 2022). Amid a soundscape of Buddhist chanting, visitors will experience how long-ago pilgrims travelled along canals in the Mekong River floodplains to worship the sculpture. Donning Microsoft HoloLens 2 goggles, they will then embark on a mixed-reality tour of the Krishna’s 1,500-year history, ultimately entering the cave temple where the sculpture was originally enshrined.

The CMA is also physically presenting sculptures of four of the eight deities once ensconced at Phnom Da, thanks to loans from the National Museum of Cambodia and the Musée Guimet in Paris. (The remaining sculptures were too fragile to travel.) All eight are reunited in life-sized interactive 3D projections that allow visitors to rotate the works by 360 degrees and zoom in on details.

Also on loan from Cambodia will be five sculptures from Angkor Borei, the ancient city near Phnom Da that dominated the region and furnished most of its artisans. In the last gallery, a film installation narrated by the actress Angelina Jolie and the writer Loung Ung will present a timeline for the sculptures and underline how international exchange led to the recent restorations and the exhibition.
• Revealing Krishna: Journey to Cambodia’s Sacred Mountain, Cleveland Museum of Art, 14 November-30 January 2022
Full article, long read: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2021/11 ... body-parts

See also: cambodian-culture-and-language/museum-r ... 39928.html

Macabre. and facile.
displaying bits and pieces right away from their context

Like the Elgin Marbles et al - now just cultural porn

1,500-year-old Krishna statue draws big crowds in Cleveland
Khouth Sophak Chakrya | Publication date 07 April 2022 | 21:29 ICT

The exhibition of Khmer statues from Phnom Da at the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Exhibition. THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART

A 1,500-year-old Krishna Lifting Mount Govardhan statue from Cambodia has been gaining prominence following a successful high resolution 3D holographic exhibition in Cleveland Museum of Art, in the US state of Ohio.

The exhibition, “Revealing Krishna: Journey to Cambodia’s Sacred Mountain”, was organised by Cleveland Museum curator Sonya Rhie Mace, who wanted people to know the story of the sculpture.

Sok Soda, deputy director of the Department of Museums at the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, said the exhibition was exciting.

“It is the first such exhibition I have ever visited. It was amazing,” Soda told The Post, adding that he was invited to a viewing in Cleveland last November.

He said that through the 3D modernisation system, visitors to the exhibition were required to wear HoloLens headsets, which provided a “spectacular” experience as it evoked a sense of emotion and visual imagery.

The simulation enabled visitors to experience history as it were because it took them to the exact location of the Krishna Lifting Mount Govardhan sculpture in Cambodia, which is in Takeo province’s Angkor Borei district.

“After visiting the exhibition, many visitors expressed joy and said they would find time to come to Cambodia, the home of the statue,” he said, noting that the exhibition was also a way of attracting foreign tourists to the Kingdom.

The exhibition, which ended in Cleveland Museum in January, will open to public at the National Museum for Asian Art of the Smithsonian Centre for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, from late April until September.
https://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/ ... -cleveland

April 15, 2022
“Revealing Krishna: Journey to Cambodia’s Sacred Mountain” Opens at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art April 30

“Revealing Krishna: Journey to Cambodia’s Sacred Mountain” will transport visitors to a sacred mountain in the floodplains of southern Cambodia through art, immersive video installations and interactive design. The exhibition, organized by the Cleveland Museum of Art and adapted by the National Museum of Asian Art, showcases a monumental sculpture of the Hindu god Krishna, known as the Cleveland Krishna, lifting Mount Govardhan to protect his people from a torrential storm sent by an angry god. For the first time, the sculpture, is explored in the context of its original physical and cultural environment: as part of a multi-religious landscape and built into a mountain. The exhibition will be on view April 30 through Sept. 18.

“We are delighted to welcome visitors to this one-of-a-kind exhibition that tells such a powerful story of international partnership between the United States and Cambodia to preserve and restore the Kingdom’s rich cultural heritage” said Chase F. Robinson, the museum’s Dame Jillian Sackler Director.

As visitors journey through the exhibition toward the monumental sculpture of Krishna, they will experience the sculpture’s life story through three digital experiences developed by the Cleveland Museum of Art and as an original documentary short film produced exclusively for the National Museum of Asian Art:

IMMERSIVE TIMELINE—GODS OF PHNOM DA: GLOBAL JOURNEYS (CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART)

The opening gallery starts with a moving timeline narrated by Angelina Jolie, director, actor and humanitarian, and Loung Ung, best-selling author of First They Killed My Father. The timeline conveys the origins, discovery and conservation history of the monumental sculpture of Krishna and seven other gods of Phnom Da. Visitors are shown archival images of excavations from the 1800s to 2021 and present-day footage and animated maps illustrating the story arc of these ancient sculptures. The film concludes by examining the ambitious conservation initiatives that have taken place throughout the past decade, which involved intensive collaboration and exchange with colleagues in Cambodia and the Cleveland Museum of Art.
https://www.khmertimeskh.com/501058043/ ... -april-30/

Cambodia’s Krishna Statue from Phnom Da, Angkor Borei to be Showcased at Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art
AKP Phnom Penh, April 29, 2022 --

As a result of longstanding cooperation on cultural preservation between Cambodia and the United States, a 1,500-year-old statue of the Hindu god Krishna and other artifacts from Cambodia will be on display, April 30 to Sept. 18, at the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art in Washington D.C.

According to a press release of the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh AKP received this afternoon, the exhibition, “Revealing Krishna: Journey to Cambodia's Sacred Mountain,” showcases the Hindu deity lifting Mount Govardhan to protect his people from a torrential storm sent by an angry god. The exhibition was previously at the Cleveland Museum of Arts.


U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia H.E. W. Patrick Murphy encouraged the public to visit this unique exhibition in a video released on the U.S. Embassy Phnom Penh’s Facebook page.
“I am proud of our longstanding efforts and cooperation to help preserve, restore, and to showcase Cambodia’s incredible heritage around the world,” he said.

Since 2001, the United States has provided over US$5 million in funding to Cambodia for cultural preservation through the Ambassador’s Fund for Cultural Preservation and grants.
- AKP
By Phal Sophanith

Cambodia’s 1,500-year-old Krishna statue showcased in National Museum of Asian Art virtual experience
Ryan General
Thu, May 26, 2022, 2 min read
Video: https://news.yahoo.com/cambodia-1-500-o ... M1DBSlygr4

The National Museum of Asian Art (NMAA) is currently hosting a focus exhibition featuring the newly restored, 1,500-year-old Cambodian stone sculpture “Krishna Lifting Mountain Govardhan.”

“Revealing Krishna: Journey to Cambodia’s Sacred Mountain,” which can be viewed from April 30 to Sept. 18, 2022, presents the story and context behind the restoration undertaken by the Cleveland Museum of Art conservation specialists.

The sculpture, which depicts the Hindu god Krishna lifting Mount Govardhan to shield his people from destruction, is one of eight deity figures recovered from cave temples in the mountain of Phnom Da near Angkor Borei, Cambodia.

Apart from the newly-restored Krishna’s unveiling, the exhibit is also integrating an interactive design that employs art, virtual tours and immersive video installations to tell the sculpture’s story.

More from NextShark: Chinese man's 24/7 livestream of his self-imposed quarantine as performance art draws in millions

The exhibition also includes the showing of an original short film called “Satook” by renowned Cambodian American filmmaker PraCh Ly.

The film looks into the significance of ancient sacred sites in the contemporary Cambodian American religious scenes and how religious traditions are transformed in diaspora communities.

The entire immersive experience is part of NMAA’s initiative called The Arts of Devotion, which aims to advance civic discussion and understanding of religion.
Organized by the Cleveland Museum of Art and the National Museum of Asian Art, the project was made possible via an agreement with the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts of the Government of the Kingdom of Cambodia, and in collaboration with the National Museum of Cambodia.
https://news.yahoo.com/cambodia-1-500-o ... M1DBSlygr4