Martin Brauen

Dr. Martin Brauen, Chief Curator, Rubin Museum of Art, came to the museum a year ago from the University of Zürich, where he served as University Professor and Senior Curator of the Ethnographic Museum there. Considered the world’s foremost expert on mandalas, Dr. Brauen has organized a wide array of exhibitions of Himalayan art throughout Europe over the course of a career that spans more than 40 years.

Dr. Brauen also is a prolific writer and filmmaker. Almost all of his exhibitions, including Mandala: The Sacred Circle in Tantric Buddhism and Dreamworld Tibet: Western Illusions, have been accompanied by catalogs and documentary films he has made. Of particular note is an extensive publication, The Dalai Lamas: A Visual History, which he edited to accompany his groundbreaking exhibition, The 14 Dalai Lamas: Tibetan Reincarnations of Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara. The topic of the complex, centuries-old institution of the Dalai Lamas and their reincarnations had never before been deeply examined.