WCMA to Host Tattoo Session, Meditations With Tibetan Lama

12:27PM / Friday, April 21, 2023Print Story | Email Story

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Williams College Museum of Art will host Lama Tashi Norbu, one of the artists featured in the current exhibition "Across Shared Waters: Contemporary Artists In Dialogue with Tibetan Art" from the Jack Shear Collection, for three programs from April 25-27, culminating in a live tattooing session at WCMA.

Tashi Norbu will lead drop-in meditation sessions in the galleries from 5 to 6 p.m. on Tuesday, April 25, and Wednesday, April 26.

On Thursday, April 27, the artist will tattoo a participant from the community, basing the design on Tibetan astrology and the recipient's own personal Buddhist mantra. During this live performance, local musicians will improvise alongside Tashi Norbu as he chants the mantra and tattoos the recipient. The galleries will remain open until 5:30 p.m, when the program begins.

This project is supported by Alexis Rosasco, a local artist and owner of AR Designs Fine Art & Tattoo shop in North Adams.

"Lama Tashi Norbu's week-long residency at WCMA will be an extraordinary opportunity for students and visitors to get to know the artist and experience his incredibly wide-ranging practice," said Lisa Dorin, WCMA's Deputy Director for Curatorial Engagement. "His live tattoo performance will definitely be a first for us. We can't wait to find out who will be the lucky recipient."

According to a press release:

Lama Tashi Norbu was born in Bhutan. He received his education at the schools of the Dalai Lama, where he became a traditional Thangka painter and ordained as a monk. He is educated in European western fine arts in Belgium and The Netherlands. Lama Tashi became an accomplished artist who never lost his spiritual Buddhist upbringing. After numerous world travels, where his art was exhibited in prestigious world museums and galleries, he founded the Museum of Contemporary Tibetan Art in the Netherlands, which is the only museum in the world dedicated to Tibetan art and is recognized by the Dutch government and registered as one of the National Museums of the Netherlands.

Lama Tashi now combines art, meditation, and Buddhist teachings, and he creates Tibetan Sand Mandalas on his many world tours. Lama Tashi is also playing with some of the greatest musicians of the world, such as Earth, Wind and Fire, and he has performed in prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall in New York City.

Tags: WCMA,

iBerkshires.com Text Ads

Now's the time...

to harvest value from your home. Click for more details about a HELOC. Insured by NCUA.

www.greylock.org

rk MILES Blding Materials

Are You Ready to Update Your Home? Start With rk MILES. 4 Locations (800)670-7433

www.rkmiles.com

If you would like to contribute information on this article, contact us at info@iberkshires.com.

Discrimination Against Muslim Americans Persists 25 Years After 9/11

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
07:00AM / Saturday, September 12, 2026

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Dozens of Muslim Americans were among people killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Untold numbers of Muslim Americans have suffered countless acts of discrimination in their aftermath.

"Of course, you'll find several accounts of Muslims from all over the U.S. describing how they went from the unknown kids in the school to being stereotyped or ridiculed for their Muslim names," Sidra Mahmood recalled recently. "However, many Americans forget that the victims of 9/11 were also Muslim Americans.

"I can't forget the time when a classmate broke down in sobs when 9/11 came up in our classroom at the Islamic seminary I went to in Texas, because her father's best friend who was like an uncle to her, died on 9/11."

Today, Mahmood is a chaplain at Williams College. In 2001, she was growing up in Karachi, Pakistan, when terrorists forced two passenger jets into the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan and another plane into the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C. A third plane, which terrorists hoped to crash into a D.C. landmark, was brought down in western Pennsylvania after passengers and crew fought back against the hijackers.

The attacks, which ultimately claimed 2,976 lives, horrified people around the world, including in Mahmood's native land.

"I remember being aghast like anyone who witnessed the fall of the Twin Towers in real time," she said. "However, even as a child, fear gripped me about the possibility of war, especially once we learned that Afghanistan, right adjacent to Pakistan, would be attacked by the U.S. My mother had told me about the 1971 war between India and Pakistan when she remembered hiding in the dark after bomb sirens would go off in Punjab after intentional blackouts.

View Full Story