Ananda K. Coomaraswamy was engaged in the world not only as a scholarly expositor of traditional culture and philosophy, but also as a radical critic of contemporary life.
Ananda Coomaraswamy (1877-1947) was one of the most famous scholars of Indian art, culture, and religion. He served for many years as the Keeper of Indian and Islamic Art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, establishing one of the most impressive collections of oriental artifacts in the world. This anthology contains thematically arranged excerpts from his many writings, letters, and speeches, making it a uniquely accessible collection of his wisdom and insight. It is richly illustrated with over 140 black-and-white historical photographs and paintings.
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (1877-1947) was a pioneer in Indian art history and in the cultural confrontation of East and West. A scholar in the tradition of the great Indian grammarians and philosophers, an art historian convinced that the ultimate value of art transcends history, and a social thinker influenced by William Morris, Coomaraswamy was a unique figure whose works provide virtually a complete education in themselves. Finding a universal tradition in past cultures ranging from the Hellenic and Christian to the Indian, Islamic, and Chinese, he collated his ideas and symbols of ancient wisdom into the sometimes complex, always rewarding pattern of essays. The Door in the Sky is a collection of the author's writings on myth drawn from his Metaphysics and Traditional Art and Symbolism, both originally published in Bollingen Series. These essays were written while Coomaraswamy was curator in the department of Asiatic Art of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, where he built the first large collection of Indian art in the United States.
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