Kurt Behrendt

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Department of Asian Art, Associate Curator

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Kurt Behrendt, Associate Curator of South Asian Art has been at the Met since 2006. He has done more than half dozen exhibitions including Buddhism along the Silk Road (2012), Tibet and India: Buddhist Traditions and Transformations (2014), Bodhisattvas of Wisdom, Compassion and Power (2021), and has published widely on the Buddhist art and architecture of the India sub-continent. Before coming to the Met, he taught graduate and undergraduate courses on South Asian art at Temple University. Ongoing field research in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Tibet, Southeast Asia and Japan provides a foundation for his exhibitions and publications. His 1997 Ph.D. from U.C.L.A. focused on the Buddhist Architecture of Gandhara.

Selected Publications:
• Behrendt, Kurt. Tibet and India: Buddhist Traditions and Transformations. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2014.
• ———. The Art of Gandhara in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2007.
• ———. The Buddhist Architecture of Gandhara. Leiden: Brill academic publishers, 2004.

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Gandhāran Imagery as Remembered by Buddhist Communities across Asia

The Rediscovery and Reception of Gandhāran art: Proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop of the Gandhāran Connections Project. eds. Rienjang, Wannaporn and Peter Stewart, Oxford: Archaeopress Publishing LTD, 2022, 107-124., 2021

This paper is an attempt to trace the impact of Gandharan sculpture from its inception through ti... more This paper is an attempt to trace the impact of Gandharan sculpture from its inception through time and across Asia. Remarkably, Gandharan art was recontextualized in the greater Buddhist world, and over time was remembered and given new meanings. The initial reuse and the export of actual Gandharan sculptures rapidly gave way to copies of Gandharan images, narrative formats, and iconographies. Even the idea of the first true portrait of Shakyamuni traces back to a sandalwood image from Udayana (Swat) that was copied in China and then became important in Japan long after Gandhara lay in ruins. Padmasambhava, who purportedly brought esoteric practices to the Himalayas, also hailed from Udayana. It is probably not coincidental that late Gandharan bronzes remain under worship in Tibetan monasteries even today. With the archaeological discovery of Gandhara in the 19th century, Buddhist communities again embraced its imagery. Notably, fasting Buddha images, based on the one excavated at Sikri, began to appear in devotional contexts in Thailand, Sri Lanka, and India. While beyond the scope of this paper, Gandharan sculpture housed in museums across the world continue to impact modern Buddhist imagery. For communities in the 21st century, the discovery of early Buddhist texts in Gandhara again highlights the importance of this ancient tradition.

Kurt Behrendt

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