Utah's
flagship art museum, Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA), will have an exhibition
on Hindu Lord Krishna starting August eight.
Running till
November 20 in the Museum's Emma Eccles Jones Education Gallery, this Krishna
exhibition “explores the Hindu god Krishna through sacred and secular artworks,
dating from the 11th century to the 20th, from the Museum's Asian art
collection. Krishna promised followers that through bhakti (devotion) to him,
one could gain moksha (salvation).”
Applauding UMFA
for organizing Hinduism focused exhibition, Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a
statement in Nevada today, said that art had a long and rich tradition in
Hinduism and ancient Sanskrit literature talked about religious paintings of
deities on wood or cloth.
Zed, who is
President of Universal Society of Hinduism, also commended UMFA for Hindu
artifacts in its permanent collections; which included images of Hindu deities
Shiva, Vishnu, Durga, Ganesha, Lakshmi, Hanuman, Saraswati, etc.
Rajan Zed urged
major art museums of the world, including Musee du Louvre and Musee d'Orsay of
Paris, Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Los Angeles Getty Center, Uffizi
Gallery of Florence (Italy), Art Institute of Chicago, Tate Modern of London,
Prado Museum of Madrid, National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, etc., to
frequently organize Hindu art focused exhibitions, thus sharing the rich Hindu
art heritage with the rest of the world.
The Utah
Museum of Fine Arts, a university and state art museum whose history goes back
to early 1900s, claims to be “Utah's primary cultural resource for global
visual arts” and having “a comprehensive collection of over 5,000 years of art
from around the world”. Per its mission statement, it “inspires critical
dialogue”. Located on the University of Utah campus in Salt Lake City, it claims
to preserve over 19,000 original art objects. Gretchen Dietrich and George Lindsey
are Executive Director and Deputy Director respectively.
The
main event 7:30 pm, will be a pageant of the world's most loved epic,
the Ramayana. It culminates at 8:30 pm with the spectacular burning of
the effigy of evil Ravana with flaming arrows and fireworks. *Please note
this last part of the burning of the effigy and fireworks will occur
only in Spanish Fork. In SLC the pageant of the Ramayana will stop short
of that point. Otherwise, both day's programs will be the same.
