Making Buddhist Images in the Modern World: Stories from Tibet – Film Screening and Book Talk
Join us for an afternoon film screening and book talk exploring Tibetan art with author and filmmaker Dr. Ming Xue. Watch the film A Woman Who Paints Thangkas (26 min), followed by a discussion of her new book, Painting Thangkas on the Tibetan Plateau: Buddhist Art Making in Transition. Bringing together over a decade of ethnographic research, Xue illuminates the complex intersections of artistic tradition, state narratives, and shifting economies Rebgong artists must negotiate.
Date: Saturday, March 21
Time: 2pm – 4pm
Cost: Members $5 / Non-members $10
Light bites will be provided
RSVP to [email protected] or call 860.443.2545 ext. 2129
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About the film:
A Woman Who Paints Thangkas (2019) 26min, color
In Rebgong, a Tibetan community in northwest China, men have been making Buddhist thangka paintings for centuries. Only until recently, Tibetan women in Rebgong began to participate in the production and circulation of thangka paintings on China’s national art market. Lutso (b. 1993) is the first Tibetan woman to operate a thangka studio and train her own apprentices—men and women—in Rebgong. One of her paintings is collected by the American Museum of Natural History in New York and on display at the museum. She is also a mother, a wife, and the oldest daughter in the family. Dr. Xue’s documentary film captures Lutso’s unique life as a thangka painter and trailblazer, who has a career to develop and a family to support.
About the book:
Painting Thangkas on the Tibetan Plateau: Buddhist Art Making in Transition (2025), University of Washington Press
Dr. Ming Xue offers a rare and deeply researched look into the lives of Rebgong thangka painters, whose sacred art is at once devotional, commercial, and political. Rebgong, a major center of thangka painting since at least the 18th century, has long been a site of artistic and religious significance. But in contemporary China, thangkas exist within multiple, sometimes conflicting, markets. Tibetan communities near and far continue to commission these intricate paintings for ritual use, while the Chinese state promotes them as folk art and a national heritage commodity. At the same time, a growing number of non-Tibetan patrons seek thangkas for their religious efficacy—the very quality often elided in official narratives. Bringing together over a decade of ethnographic research, Dr. Xue illuminates the complex intersections of artistic tradition, state narratives, and shifting economies Rebgong artists must negotiate. She gives particular attention to female thangka painters, who were only allowed to paint beginning in the twenty-first century, and who continue to face cultural and market constraints unique to their gender. The book challenges assumptions about commodification, showing that rather than diminishing the religious value of thangkas, the market can serve as a platform for painters to assert their faith, preserve their cultural traditions, and establish their artistic authority. Blending anthropology, material religion, and art history, Painting Thangkas on the Tibetan Plateau reveals the evolving social life of Tibetan sacred art in the twenty-first century.
About the author:
Ming Xue received her Ph.D. in anthropology from UCLA and is a Research Associate in the Anthropology Division at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). Her research focuses on material culture, material religion, and museum anthropology. She has been doing fieldwork with Tibetan thangka painters in Rebgong since 2009, and she is the author of Painting Thangkas on the Tibetan Plateau: Buddhist Art Making in Transition (University of Washington Press, 2025). Xue is also a documentary filmmaker, curator, and writer, with an award-winning book in Chinese, The Shrine on 77th Street (2024) looking at anthropology collections and contemporary museum practices. She recently curated an exhibition, “A Journey of Spiritual Guidance” (2025) at Beijing 798 Art Zone.