There is a real danger of the disappearance of the unique Tibetan culture. So at such a time, this kind of work is very, very useful, very helpful....I feel that I see part of a Tibetan antique collection, ancient Tibetan things."
So commented the fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, upon visiting the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art. Founded in 1945 by Jacques Marchais (the professional named adopted by the private collector Jacqueline Klauber), this well-known, yet infrequently visited museum designed in the fashion of a small mountain temple in the Himalayas, is nestled on a serene hillside on Staten Island, New York. Never able to visit Tibet herself, Jacques Marchais developed a fascination for the culture and art of Tibet in the 1930s and spent the rest of her life collecting objects of Tibetan origin. Today, in its fiftieth year, the museum holds over 1,200 pieces and is particularly strong in Tibetan Buddhist art from Tibet, Mongolia, and northern China dating from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries.
Treasures of Tibetan Art: The Collections of the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art, is a unique catalog of the most important works from this renowned collection. Beautifully illustrated, with 190 photographs (including eighty-one full-color plates) this extraordinary volume makes much of the splendor of the museum's holdings available for the first time. The objects--selected for their aesthetic or technical quality, religious or historic significance, rarity, or representation of similar works in the museum's collection--are primarily examples of religious art from Tibet, China, Mongolia, and Nepal. They include decorative temple and secular pieces, as well as several contemporary works, and works from as early as the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The book represents a collaboration between Western and Tibetan scholars. Compiled by the museum's director and curator, Barbara Lipton, and Tibetan consultant Nima Dorjee Ragnubs, the piece