Book Title: Jain Center Los Angeles CA 2008 09 Pratishta Souvenior
Author(s): Jain Center So CA Los Angeles
Publisher: USA Jain Center Southern California
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Jain Art in Los Angeles
Urvashi Jain
I set out with my mom on an unusual adventure. The mission? To explore local Los Angeles museums to find pieces of Jain art. My findings excited me. Since Jainism is not well known to the rest of the world, I thought would not find too many works of art. On the contrary, I found Jainism in many different forms.
My first stop was the Getty Center. I looked in the catalogs to find anything to do with Jainism. This museum had two pieces cataloged, but not on display. They were based on India's independence, and not really on Jainism, so I decided to visit the next museum, the UCLA Hammer Museum. There were no Jain works on display here, so I tried their bookstore. They had three books on Indian culture, one book was even dedicated to Indian festivals, but nothing went into detail on Jainism.
The next museum I visited, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), had an entire floor dedicated to Islamic and Southeast Asian Art. This museum did an excellent job of showing how Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam co-existed in Southeast Asia. I found my first two pieces of Jain art here. It was a painting showing Ajitanath Bhagwan with his followers. An architectural bracket, probably found in a Jain temple in India, was mounted on the wall nearby. The description of these works was brief. I did not find anything else on Jainism at LACMA on that day. However, on another visit, two weeks later, I saw some additions: there was a Jain shrine, a miniature version of a Jain temple in India, and a pratimaji of Rishabhanath Bhagwan accompanied by
a detailed description. Next on my list was the Norton Simon Museum of Art. I immediately found what I was looking for. By the stairs, there was a wall description on Jainism, along with a picture of Ajitanath Bhagwan's statue and its description. Inside the room, I saw the pratimaji of Ajitanath Bhagwan. My heart started racing as I approached it because it was the biggest Jain piece I had seen in a museum until now. My mom got very excited as well. The description for this work was informative. Then, nearby, I found several small displays of Jain art. The first was of Rishabhanath Bhagwan. The second was of Suparshvanath Bhagwan and attending deities. The third showed a combination of Jain worshipers. The fourth showed Neminath Bhagwan and
his followers. The fifth was labeled as a Jain votive shrine. But that was not all! In the next room, I found another pratimaji of Suparshvanath Bhagwan along with a yaksha and yakshi. The bookstore even had three books on Jainism. The books were: Peaceful Liberators: Jain Art from India by Pratapaditya Pal, Jain Cosmology by Colette Caillat and lastly, Jainism and Ecology by Chris Key Chapple. This was where I concluded my adventure. I realize there is a lot more that the world has not seen about Jainism, and I want
to change that. Urvashi Jain is a Pathshala student at the Jain Center of Southern California.
