SKY WRITING
The calligraphic art of
Chögyal Namkhai Norbu
August 2018 - October 2018
MACO inaugurated Sky Writing: the Calligraphic Art of Chögyal Namkhai Norbu in the MACO's Project Space, located on the second floor of the former Chancellery of the Aldobrandesco Castle Complex in Arcidosso.
Created specifically for MACO by Master Chögyal Namkhai Norbu in 2016, this sublime series of calligraphy was realized by brush, in golden ink on a deep blue lapislazzuli paper. Many masters, scholars, and oriental poets, over the centuries, have trained in the art of calligraphy, reaching real forms of artistic and meditative expression where painting and writing become one.
Often in the movement of the shapes of the brush strokes are expressed the nature of the elements: the flow of water, the movement of clouds, the flight of birds.
In addition, also for the first time, historical documents and manuscripts of very significant spiritual value are being exhibited, such as original edicts concerning the spiritual and historical role of Chögyal Namkhai Norbu, written down by the famous scholar Gangkar Choskyi Senge and His Holiness the 16th Karmapa Rigpai Dorje.
LHASA AND BEYOND
July 2017 - September 2017
LHASA AND BEYOND is a photographic exhibition that documents the 1948 expedition to Central Tibet, led by the great Italian orientalist and explorer Giuseppe Tucci, and documented in Tucci’s "To Lhasa and Beyond: Diary of the Expedition to Tibet in the Year 1948" published almost seventy years ago. The exhibit confronts the historical expedition photographs from 1948, by the Neapolitan photographer P.F. Mele, with new images of the same sites revisited in 2016, creating a temporal bridge between the past and the present, between a vanished world and one becoming.
The exhibition includes a multimedia narrative which recounts key moments of the 1948 Tucci expedition, projected onto a 3D relief map of Tibet.
The exhibition has been made possible by kind collaboration of the Annadora Anfuso Family Archive and the Völkerkunde Museum in Zurich, the custodian of the P.F. Mele photographic archive.
MEDITATION IN MOTION
Foot steps to the sublime
Extended until March 2021
In Tibet, it is said that anyone who walks can dance and anyone who speaks can sing. Dance can act as a bridge to another dimension, towards a more profound and conscious state of mind, in which the dancers move, involving everyone around them. The exhibition Meditation in Motion explores the world of Tibetan dance, through costumes, photographs, and video installations. From folk dances to Tibetan sacred dances, Cham and Gar, which transforms our ordinary perception of a given place into a perception of a consecrated space of pure existence: "the great mandala of action".
