Amazing Kathmandu
Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital, is set in a valley surrounded by the Himalayan mountains. At the heart of the old city’s mazelike alleys is Durbar Square, which becomes frenetic during Indra Jatra, a religious festival featuring masked dances. Many of the city’s historic sites were damaged or destroyed by a 2015 earthquake
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Prachalit: The Everyday Newar Script Living in Ranjana’s Ornamental Shadow
While Ranjana gets the attention for its sweeping, ornamental curves, most everyday Newar writing over the centuries was actually done in Prachalit, a plainer, rounder script whose name itself simply means prevalent, or popular, the script Newars actually reached for when writing something other than a temple inscription. Table of Contents Two Styles, One Family […]
Ranjana: The Newar Script So Beautiful It Became Nepal’s Standard Calligraphy
Ranjana, whose name itself means delightful, is widely considered Nepal’s standard calligraphic script, its ornate symmetry and sweeping curves carved into temple inscriptions, painted across paubha scroll paintings, and stamped onto manuscript covers for close to a thousand years. It’s also known, outside Nepal, as Lantsa, the script Tibetan Buddhists still use to write Sanskrit […]
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How a Small Kathmandu Gallery Grew Into Nepal’s Biggest Contemporary Art Festival
In 1987, Sangeeta Thapa and artist Shashikala Tiwari opened Siddhartha Art Gallery on Pratap Bhawan Kantipath, a single exhibition space for contemporary Nepali work. Nearly four decades and more than 600 curated shows later, the gallery’s own nonprofit foundation now runs the Kathmandu Triennale, recognised internationally by the Biennale Foundation as Nepal’s flagship contemporary art […]
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Paubha: The Sacred Newar Painting That Predates and Inspired Tibetan Thangka
Paubha is the traditional sacred scroll painting of Nepal’s Newar community, an art form scholars widely credit as a direct precursor to Tibetan thangka, carried north by Newar artists and artisans who spent centuries decorating Tibetan monasteries and shaping what would become that tradition’s own visual language. Table of Contents Where the Name Comes From […]
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Adventure in Kathmandu
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