Reflections on Reflections

The graduate student workshop ''Buddhist Art: Objects and Contexts'' was an unusual event. Like Reflections of the Buddha, the exhibition it addressed, it was in constant dialogue with its physical setting, the singular Tadao Ando ¯ building home to the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, as the four sessions moved through the four galleries in changing light. The event was also distinguished by its spirit of openness, a very genuine receptivity to whatever anyone wished to say, however prepared or spontaneous, about either the objects or the fluid notion of ''context.'' Perhaps the luminous building deserves some credit for this spirit, but Emily Rauh Pulitzer, founder and chair of the Pulitzer Foundation , and senior curator Francesca Herndon-Consagra set the tone for the two days. Both actively took part in the formal gallery sessions and the informal discussions that spilled over into coffee breaks and meals, sharing their knowledge of the architecture and resident art. We followed Emily outdoors and into the massive spiral of Richard Sera's weathering steel sculpture, Joe, to feel the power of the form and take shelter from the cold Midwest wind—an experience that defied photography. Later, however, my iPhone caught a conversation between Francesca and Yukio Lippit dramatized by geometric patterns of light and shadow created by the raking sunlight pulled into the Ando ¯ building from the sky over the long, rectangular reflecting pool that bisects most of the U-shaped structure (Fig. 9). The event was further distinguished by an invigorating lack of focus attributable to the geographic and chronological range of the exhibit, as well as the deliberate ambiguity of the workshop theme, and to the charge given the speakers by workshop organizer Phillip Bloom. Bloom asked each one to provide ''a brief provocation to spur debate,'' and the participants took him at his word. As if to defy the controlling geometry of the dramatic gallery spaces, the presentations took off in all directions. The program began in the main gallery, partially illuminated by the shifting light of the late-autumn afternoon sun. Windows run along the lower half of the wall looking out to the reflecting pool. Because the natural light precludes showing light-sensitive objects in this space, our first subjects were stone sculptures that lost their colorful pigments long ago. (The lacquered, gilded, and polychrome objects in the entrance gallery were shrouded in black cloth, waiting to be unveiled and discussed the …