Video: Asia Society Museum Showcases Long-Lost 'Golden Visions' from Tibet

Through gleaming statuary, intricate reliefs, and vintage black-and-white photographs, Asia Society Museum's latest exhibition, Golden Visions of Densatil: A Tibetan Buddhist Monastery, takes visitors on an exploration of the Buddhist monastery in Densatil, in central Tibet. This is the first-ever exhibition to focus on Densatil, which was largely destroyed during China's Cultural Revolution.

The exhibition is curated by Dr. Olaf Czaja in collaboration with Dr. Adriana Proser, John H. Foster Senior Curator of Traditional Asian Art at Asia Society Museum. Densatil Monastery is renowned for the eight extraordinary 13th- to 15th-century inlaid gilt copper memorial stupas (tashi gomang) that were located in its main hall.

"The more that we learned about the history of the monastery and the magnificence of these works, the more we realized that this was a great subject for an exhibition," says Proser. In the video above, she introduces audiences to the history of Densatil, elaborates on how the stupas looked in their original context, and gives viewers a closer look at the piece that inspired the exhibition, the Dhumavati Shri Devi.

Golden Visions of Densatil is on view through May 18, 2014 at Asia Society Museum in New York City.