White Lotus Society

Unidentified artist

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In 386 CE, Huiyuan, founder of the Pure Land sect of Buddhism, built a monastery at the foot of Mount Lu in Jiangxi Province. This became the meeting point for his newly founded White Lotus Society—a group of scholars and monks from China, India, and Central Asia—to discuss and debate the Buddhist faith, which was still relatively new to China. Included in the group were men now best remembered for their poetry, including Tao Yuanming and Xie Lingyun. Images of the White Lotus Society later become popular as painting subjects; this copy, likely made in the fifteenth century, purports to preserve a version by the Northern Song master Li Gonglin.

Asian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met's collection of Asian art—more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the third millennium B.C. to the twenty-first century—is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world. Each of the many civilizations of Asia is represented by outstanding works, providing an unrivaled experience of the artistic traditions of nearly half the world.

Metropolitan Museum of Art