To mark the 10th anniversary of our relocation to the Yongsan site, the National Museum of Korea has organized the special exhibition Masterpieces of Early Buddhist Sculpture, 100BCE-700CE, featuring 220 works from twenty-five museums and institutions at home and abroad.

Buddhism and its images have been a powerful element in Asia, facilitating exchanges between cultures. The exhibition casts new light on the history of Buddhist sculpture and their role in binding heterogeneous traditions together. The creation of the religion and the first anthropomorphic images of the Buddha are introduced in the first section of the exhibition through powerful statues made in the Gandhara and Mathura regions of India. The second section covers the spread of Buddhism into China, which had a very different linguistic, religious, and philosophical background to that of India, and subsequent Sinicization of the religion. The third section sheds light on the Buddhist statues from the Korean Peninsula and Japan. In the final section, the major pensive bodhisattva statues from India, China, Korea and Japan are presented to invite comparative contemplation. The exhibition will be a unique opportunity to appreciate the finest examples of Buddhist sculpture.