In 1985, in a remote Siberian province of the former USSR, a set of 76 Tibetan paintings was discovered in a neglected box. The paintings constitute an extraordinary illustrated medical treatise known as The Blue Beryl, commonly referred to as the Tibetan Medical Atlas, which documents in detail the entire Tibetan medical system. Originally created in Tibet to train physicians, this set made its way to Siberia at the turn of the century. Shortly after, it was expropriated during the Stalinist purges, stored in a sealed Orthodox church and forgotten for nearly sixty years.

An exhibition called The Buddha's Art of Healing, Tibetan Medical Paintings from Buryatia, showing 40 thangkas from this unique Tibetan Medical Atlas will be inaugurated in May at the Michael C. Carlos Museum in Atlanta, GA. His Holiness the Dalai Lama will attend the opening of the exhibition. It will then move to the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. from August to December 1998. A major international conference will occur there, where it will be on view from November 7-9,1998, with doctors and practitioners of Tibetan medicine from around the world. His Holiness the Dalai Lama will also be at the conference.

The exhibition is being produced and coordinated by Pro-Cultura, Inc., in cooperation with the History Museum of Buryatia and the Buryat Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Technical assistance has been provided by The American Federation of Arts and an Advisory Committee made up of respected scholars and physicians such as Dr. Herbert Benson, Dr. Andrew Weil, Dr. Dean Ornish, Dan Goleman Ph.D., and others.

The medical conference in Washington, D.C. is being organized by Pro-Cultura, Inc. and the Conservancy for Tibetan Art and Culture, a recently formed non-profit under the patronage of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

For more information please call Anna Souza or Nonie King at Pro-Cultura: 914-741-2781, fax: 914-7411932, e-mail: [email protected], or the Conservancy for Tibetan Art and Culture at 202-828-6288, fax 202-4299574. ä_æ