Religious art objects from the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan have traveled to the San Francisco Asian Art Museum for a special display. Most are from active Buddhist monasteries where they will return to continued use in the rituals for which they were created. The artifacts themselves were convincingly mystical, and that was nice, but I disliked the over-active video on all four walls of one of the galleries. It was like being forced to tune in to PBS whether you wanted to or not. It reminded me of the Brandy Ho chain restaurant branch in the Castro, where diners face a big-screen TV showing the food they are eating being cooked in simulation.
As usual it was not possible to photograph the visiting objects inside the galleries, but I did take a few photos in the open atrium outside where monks from Bhutan were supervising a traditional altar and creating mandalas.
Later I went upstairs to the permanent collections of Himalayan and Indian art, and in those spaces photography is permitted.
I also came across one of the funerary urns from the Philippines that my Filipino friend resents so intensely because he thinks their relative crudeness of execution does not speak well for his culture. I will make an effort (not for the first time) to point out the possibility of admiring the honesty and strength of the design.
What my friend would like better is the smoothness of work like this from ancient Gandhara. But to my mind we can enjoy it equally well whether we are personally descended from the people who (by whatever miracle) managed to produce it – or not.