Sacred World Art Collection: Recent Donations
- August 13, 2024 - December 20, 2024
F. Lanier Graham during a walk through in 2014 of what became the GTU Sacred World Art Collection. Previously, the collection was mostly housed and on display at California State University, East Bay.
F. Lanier Graham receiving a blessing scarf from Venerable Thepo Rinpoche on February 26, 2015, on the opening of "In Celebration of Tibetan Year 2142: Year of the Wood Sheep."
F. Lanier Graham on California Living cover, July 19, 1970 . He was described as "The newest prize in San Francisco's museum collection."
The Institute for Aesthetic Development and F. Lanier Graham recently donated additional sacred art objects to the Sacred World Art Collection. Graham passed away on August 1 after a lingering illness. He was 84.
Over the last 10 years, his foundation has donated to the GTU over 600 objects, which are primarily for teaching purposes. Following his godfather's practice, Lanier used miniature gods and goddesses as a concrete aid to teaching, beginning with a class on religion that he taught at Kenyon College. Years later, this expanded to using regular sized objects when he taught museum and history classes as a professor in the early 1990s.
Graham’s served as professor at California State University, East Bay, where he taught museum studies and curatorship since 1993. Before his move to academia, he was a curator at the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Fine Art Museums of San Francisco, the Norton Simon Museum, and the National Gallery of Australia.
Some of the recent artifacts on display are:
• Small carved head of Aphrodite, circa 300 BCE
• Terracotta Ishtar from 1800-1600 BCE
• Bust of Hercules, circa 300 BCE
• Bronze Aphrodite, circa 2nd century BCE
• Stone Aztec Water Goddess Chalchiuhtlicue, circa 1500
For more information about the GTU Sacred World Art Collection see https://www.gtu.edu/sacred-world/ and for the Institute for Aesthetic Development see https://instituteforaestheticdevelopment.org/
