How a museum masterpiece’s life-size replica sparked rare US-China collaboration

For anyone who has visited the Chinese galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, there is one work that stops them in their tracks.

Stepping into Gallery 206, home to Chinese Buddhist art, visitors are met by a monumental wall – over 15 metres wide and 7.5 metres tall (nearly 50 feet by 25 feet) – covered in a Buddhist assembly so vast and majestic that it momentarily erases the Manhattan bustle outside.

Here stands the Medicine Buddha, a 14th century Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) mural originally from Guangsheng Temple in central China’s Shanxi province, glowing with mineral pigments and filled with serene deities.

The work left a lasting impression on Zhang Jian, director of the Meticulous Painting Institute at the Chinese National Academy of Arts, who visited the Met three times before 2023.