Relief with Guardian Figure, from the Lianhua Cave, Longmen, China, late Northern Wei dynasty, dated 533, limestone with traces of polychromy, 24 1/8 x 11 x 4 1/2 in. (61.2 x 27.8 x 11.4 cm), Art Properties, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University in the City of New York, Sackler Collections (S1100).

Art Properties has loaned 10 Buddhist stone sculptures and ink rubbings taken from 2 of these works to the exhibition China Then and Now, which runs from November 22, 2014 to March 8, 2015, at the Nassau County Museum of Art in Roslyn Harbor, NY. These Chinese sculptures date from the Northern Wei (386-534) to the Tang dynasties (618-907), and some of the works in the collection are believed to have been excavated from the 6th-century Buddhist cave temples at Xiangtangshan in northern China. All of these works are part of our extensive holdings in the Sackler Collections, donated to Columbia University by the physician and art collector Dr. Arthur M. Sackler. They recently had traveled as part of the large exhibition Treasures Rediscovered: Chinese Stone Sculptures from the Sackler Collections at Columbia University, held at the Wallach Art Gallery in 2008 and in other venues across the United States. The current exhibition, China Then and Now, brings our sculptures together with blue-and-white porcelains of the Ming and Qing dynasties (17th-18th centuries) loaned by the Frick Collection in New York City and contemporary ink paintings by the Beijing artist Liu Dan (b. 1953). -by Roberto C. Ferrari, Curator of Art Properties

Exhibition website

Wallach Treasures Rediscovered website