CLEVELAND — Take a trip from Cleveland to Cambodia without boarding a plane. A new exhibit at the Cleveland Museum of Art allows visitors to experience the country’s rich culture and history with its new exhibit, “Revealing Krishna: Journey to Cambodia’s Sacred Mountain.”
According to the museum, the exhibit “presents the story, context, and new restoration of a masterwork in the museum’s collection, Krishna Lifting Mount Govardhan. The 1,500-year-old stone sculpture from Cambodia, larger than life size, depicts the young Hindu god in the superhuman act of shielding his people from destruction.”
Krishna is the centerpiece of what the museum called a “mixed-reality” exhibit.
“Not everyone can travel the world all the time, especially now, it’s increasingly difficult,” explained Sonya Rhie Mace, George P. Bickford Curator of Indian and Southeast Asian Art. “It’s a way for us to have a window into the human beings and the incredible work they did, the astonishing skill that artists, human artists, long ago and far away, were able to create.”
The exhibit tells the story of how these different sculptures of Krishna made their way from Cambodia to Cleveland.
The museum said this state-of-the-art experience came from years of planning, technology and collaboration from around the globe.
“I want people to feel good about the work of museums,” explained Mace, “that museums have the resources to collaborate with countries of origin to work together in order to actually share resources, to share pieces, objects, knowledge and expertise.”
Nearly 4,500 artists, historians and designers worked on the exhibit, which is on display through Jan. 30. Tickets and time slots are available on the museum’s website.
