Article: Silk Road Buddhist cave art in American collections: recovering the context.

On a recent visit to Kansas City, I was struck by the Nelson-Atkins Museum's collection of Silk Road Buddhist and Chinese art. Not so much by the usual suspects, though--Tang Dynasty ceramic Bactrian camels, Sogdian riders and the like--but by the disiecta membra, forlorn if beautiful fragments displayed in a back room, pieces grouped as "Silk Road Buddhist," with only the merest provenance or explanation given in the labels. Every American museum with an Asian art collection seems to have a similar room, with similar pieces, including small fragments of Gandharan stucco work from Afghanistan and cave painting fragments from Western China's Buddhist caves. Dunhuang is the ...

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