Parker Niles ‘23

“Buddha in a Box: Exploring Museum and Ritual Meanings of Animate Himalayan Sculpture”

The 2023 Shansi Prize is awarded to Parker Niles ‘23, for his honors capstone project “Buddha in a Box: Exploring Museum and Ritual Meanings of Animate Himalayan Sculpture,” nominated by Dr. Emilia Bachrach, Assistant Professor of Religion and Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies.

Niles spent more than a year working on this thesis, which was inspired by his time as a Gallery Guide at the Allen Memorial Art Museum on Oberlin’s campus. Niles comments on some of his motivation for writing the thesis on this subject, “I admired the Himalayan statues, because I had an interest in Himalayan art, and I knew their function as animate, embodied buddhas that would be used in devotional rituals. However, there was little museum interpretation for these statues, and many visitors would see them without understanding the wealth of Buddhist practice that went into the construction and consecration of these statues, and indeed, many wouldn't necessarily know what they are.”

Niles’s work had a direct impact on the process the AMAM has taken to reinstall the Himalayan buddha statues, and will be in a video that patrons to the museum can watch to more deeply understand their significance.

Dr. Bachrach notes that “Though [Niles’s] final recommendation—which includes, among several points, the recommendation to better contextualize the objects with further text and audio—is articulate, carefully thought out, and well-defended based on the other components of his research and writing, Parker grappled with how to be lucid and confident in his recommendation, while still articulating his own humility as a student (and not a curator, not a member of the Tibetan Buddhist community, etc.).”

We commend Parker Niles on the intensive interdisciplinary work put into his honors Capstone and the deepening of cross-cultural understanding and respect it will bring to patrons of the AMAM and admirers of the buddha statues.