Cleveland Museum of Art embarks on radical reconstruction of Cambodian Krishna statue

THE CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER
By Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer

The Cleveland Museum of Art's Krishna Govardhan sculpture as it was installed in the museum's new Asian Wing in 2013. The museum removed the work recently to embark on a yearlong project to take it apart and put it back together. When finished, it will be displayed freestanding in a gallery as opposed to against a wall, as is shown here.

CLEVELAND, Ohio---The Cleveland Museum of Art's seventh-century Cambodian statue of the Hindu god Krishna, a broken masterpiece painstakingly reassembled in 1978, is ready for a yearlong radical makeover in the museum's conservation lab. The goal of the project, funded by a $70,000 Bank of America Art Conservation Project grant, is to dismantle and reconstruct the sculpture's 11 pieces to re-create its correct pose for the first time since the fragments were unearthed in stages starting more than a century ago. The pose matters because it will help reveal the work's true religious meaning at its time of origin -- a pivotal moment in the development of Hinduism. [More]