The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in the United States has an area with Chinese Buddhist art. There, one artwork grabs visitors’ attention right away.
It is a large wall filled with images of a Buddhist gathering. This is the Medicine Buddha, a mural from the 14th century. It comes from the Yuan dynasty, which lasted from 1279 to 1368. In 1928, the 700-year-old relic left China after being sold by poor monks.
Zhang Jian is the director of the Meticulous Painting Institute at the Chinese National Academy of Arts. He was very impressed by the work. For three years, Zhang worked with Chinese artists and scholars to carefully study every crack, line and mark to create a full-size copy. Making a copy is much easier than bringing the relic back to China.
In a time when the relationship between the US and China faces difficulties, people from both countries still work together on cultural projects.
