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Glenn Mullin had spent a year organizing "Portals to Shangri-La: Masterpieces From Buddhist Mongolia" for the Oglethorpe University Museum of Art and was about to attend the signing of the loan papers at the Mongolian ministry when he got a heartbreaking phone call.
Mongolia's fragile coalition government had collapsed when the Communist Party pulled out. The prime minister, who had offered to write the catalog foreword, was out of a job, and all his ministers were sacked. That meant that there was no one who could sign the loan approvals for the 70 works from the Zanabazar Mongolia National Fine Arts Museum that comprised the show.
Politics had pulled the shade on "Portals" one month before its Feb. 12 opening.
But Mullin, an independent scholar and author based in Mongolia, did not give up. Thanks to his determination, the fleet-footed generosity of American collectors and the Internet, he assembled a substitute exhibit in just two weeks. The show, one of several metro events celebrating Mongolia's 800th anniversary as a nation, will go on as scheduled --- different from, but maybe better than, its original incarnation. It will include Buddhist thangkas --- embroidered or painted images that serve as guides for contemplative experience --- miniature paintings, sculptures, a painted chest and a special tapestry woven from dyed yak hair.
Ten minutes after receiving the call, Mullin pounded out an SOS e-mail to Don Rubin. The New York businessman, founder of MultiPlan Inc., a managed-health-care network, is not only one of the foremost collectors of Himalayan art but also an Oglethorpe alumnus. He had loaned works to two previous exhibits Mullin had curated for Oglethorpe and brought those exhibits to the Rubin Museum, an institution seeded with art from the collection that he and his wife, Shelley, established in New York in 2004. Oglethorpe's gallery is close to his heart. Gallery director Lloyd Nick's interest in Asian art is not the only reason.
"From a karmic point of view, it's really exciting," says Rubin, 70, class of '56. "My freshman dorm stood exactly where the museum is now."
Rubin and Mullin went to work.
"Within hours [Rubin] had phoned around to half a dozen other major collectors and created a small think tank of friends and associates involved in the Asian art world," Mullin writes in an e-mail from Mongolia. "Two days later he sent me numerous Web links on which I could surf American art treasuries from the comfort of my little apartment in [the capital] Ulan Bator."
Rubin offered Mullin the pick of his private collection. The curator selected 25 works by browsing images of Rubin's holdings posted on the Web site (www.himalayan art.org.). Together, they rounded up 70 pieces from collectors throughout the country.
"What had taken a year in Mongolia was accomplished in a week, and with even better results," the scholar says.
Nick explains: "Because Communists destroyed so many of the country's treasures, more of Mongolia's great art exists outside the country. There will be a greater variety of art in this exhibition than in the original," and a broader chronological reach.
"You don't organize a show like this in two weeks," Nick says. "It took a lot of effort from people devoted to the cause."
Rubin, pleased as punch, says: "We did it on a dime."
Copyright 2006 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
