Jeff Watt | |
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Born | March 23, 1957 |
Known for | curator |
Jeff Watt (born March 23, 1957) is a scholar and curator of Himalayan and Tibetan Art [1] [2] and well known translator of Tibetan texts. [3]
Since 1998 he has been the Director and Chief Curator of the Himalayan Art Resources (HAR) website, a comprehensive on-line resource for Himalayan art and iconography that features thousands of artworks from Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, and Mongolia with a catalog of about 60,000 images written by Watt. [4] From October 1999 until October 2007 Watt was also the founding Curator and leading scholar at the Rubin Museum of Art (RMA) in New York City which houses one of the largest collections of Himalayan and Tibetan art in North America. [5]
Watt began studying Tibetan Buddhism in Seattle, Washington with Dezhung Rinpoche as a teenager and dropped out of school to take monk's vows at the age of seventeen in 1974. He gave back his vows in 1985 but continued his studies and also undertook traditional retreats. [6]
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(help)Tibetan Buddhism is the form of Buddhism practiced in Tibet and Bhutan, where it is the dominant religion. It also has adherents in the regions surrounding the Himalayas, in much of Central Asia, in the Southern Siberian regions such as Tuva, and in Mongolia.
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Bon, also spelled Bön, is a Tibetan religious tradition with many similarities to Tibetan Buddhism and also many unique features. Bon, also known as Yungdrung Bon, initially developed in the tenth and eleventh centuries, but may retain elements from earlier religious traditions. Bon remains a significant minority religion in Tibet and the surrounding Himalayan regions.
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Kurtis R. Schaeffer is Professor of Tibetan and Buddhist Studies at the University of Virginia and Chair of the Religious Studies department. His primary topics of research are the history of the regions of Nepal, India, Tibet, and China, with a focus on the forms of Buddhism present in these areas, most especially Tibetan Buddhism. Some specific issues he has been concentrated on include Indo-Tibetan poetry, the development of classical learning and printed literature in Tibetan cultural regions, and the history of women, saints, and Dalai Lamas in Tibet. For his work, Schaeffer has received Fulbright, Ryskamp, and Whiting fellowships.
Buddhism was first actively disseminated in Tibet from the 6th to the 9th century CE, predominantly from India. During the Era of Fragmentation, Buddhism waned in Tibet, only to rise again in the 11th century. With the Mongol invasion of Tibet in the 13th century and the establishment of the Mongol Yuan dynasty, Tibetan Buddhism spread beyond Tibet to Mongolia and China. From the 14th to the 20th century, Tibetan Buddhism was patronized by the Chinese Ming dynasty (1368–1644) and the Manchurian Qing dynasty (1644–1912).
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