ART SHOW FROM PAKISTAN BACK ON

An exhibition of Buddhist art at the Asia Society, originally scheduled to open in March 2011 but postponed after political turmoil in Pakistan, is back on track for an opening next month, the New York Times reports.

The roadblocks were many and varied, including the deaths of two major supporters of the show, Asia Society chairman Richard Holbrooke, who had been special U.S. representative to Pakistan, and former Punjab governor Salman Taseer, who was assassinated by his bodyguard. Cultural exchange was also sidetracked following the shooting of two Pakistanis by a CIA agent in January 2011, and the incursion by U.S. forces involved in the death of Osama bin Laden in May.

Now that two planeloads of art from Lahore and Karachi landed in New York last week, Asia Society director Melissa Chiu thought it was safe to announce that “The Buddhist Heritage of Pakistan: Art of Gandahara” is set for Aug. 9-Oct. 30, 2011. The exhibition features 70 sculptures, architectural reliefs and gold and bronze works from the 2,000-year-old Gandahara civilization in northwest Pakistan, where Buddhism spread in the first century C.E. thanks to the Silk Road trade routes.

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