Windhorse/Rubin Museum (Thursday Doors)

Come, the yellow one said.  Follow my secrets.  Breathe into always.

Come, the green one said.  The air is a garden of forever between deep and wild.  Follow my secrets through the whispers of sea shadows wearing skins of light.  Breathe into always inside the mother moonship rising along the crescent.

Come, the red one said.  Not by lines but by circles.  Take your fears and hide them.

Come, blue one said, in the thousand tongues of the night sky, in the dazzled river songs of darkness.  Not by lines but by circles. They danced though currents of stars. 

The white one held out a wing and a prayer.  Take your fears and hide them.  Shapeshift into your dreams, beyond the tides of why.

Come, they said.

The Rubin Museum, which closed in 2024, was one of my favorite places in the city. Besides the wonderful exhibits of Asian art, it offered classes (I made an amulet in one), and musical performances in a small intimate auditorium (among the ones I attended were Rosanne Cash, Tom Rush, Tim O’Brien and Alejandro Escovedo)

My last visit there featured this sculptural installation by Asha Kama Waydi, called Windhorse, after Lungta, a mythical Tibetan creature that “combines the speed of the wind and the strength of the horse to carry prayers from the earth to the heavenly realms”.

Constructed of faded prayer flags, the horses that emerge from the falling flags embody the traditional prayer flag colors: yellow, for wisdom and earth; red, for compassion and fire; green, for equanimity and water; white, for purity and air; and blue, for endurance and space.

The Rubin was constructed in a spiral with the staircase to each floor winding around a central atrium, and the windhorse filled the space from top to bottom. I was reminded of it by a recent visit to the Guggenheim, which is laid out in a similar way.

I was very unhappy when I learned the Museum was closing to become a “traveling and virtual museum” and research center. All museums suffered during Covid, but evidently the Rubin’s endowment was in pretty good shape. In any case, no explanation to satisfy me was given. The building could fetch tens of millions of dollars from a real estate developer, which might have had some influence. But why couldn’t they have cut a deal to keep a physical museum with apartments built above it?

I was glad to have had the chance to experience this wonderful work of art before the museum closed. Art is best experienced in person, not virtually.

The Lungta is associated with positive energy, life force, and good luck. You can read more about it here.

The doors and facade photos are from the Rubin website. You can read about its history and current projects, and also view photos from the art collection, here.

My poem is for Sadje’s imagery prompt at W3.

And don’t forget to check out all the doors at Thursday Doors, hosted by Dan Antion.