Here I am once again sitting in the Business Class lounge at Terminal 7 - JFK. No, I don't fly Business Class. I just fly so much that they always let me use the lounge - free food, free drinks, etc.
London is my next port of call. I arrive at 6:20 in the morning and then immediately catch the bus from Heathrow to Oxford. Most of the conference participants are already there enjoying the Oxford pub life. The conference starts at 2:30 tomorrow which will allow me a few hours sleep before lunch and the opening speeches and lectures. My paper is scheduled for Friday afternoon. The title "Traditional Tibetan Art: Moving Beyond Iconography & Religion." It is actually an updated version of a paper I gave in Beijing this past October. The Powerpoint presentation is full of great art with most of it unpublished. I have also added recently discovered paintings from my last trip to Chengdu and Beijing in March/April.
I don't think I have been back to Oxford since 1970. It has been a long time. The Ashmolean Museum has re-opened and hopefully I will get a chance to see some of their Tibetan paintings. Amy Heller just recently published a book highlighting the Ashmolean's Tibetan sculpture collection. Still, it is the paintings that are of primary interest for me.
