Rubin Museum Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room

You take one of eight stools while a recording of monks and nuns chanting fills the room. The butter lamps flicker, though they're simulated, and the rice offerings are fake.

This is the Rubin Museum's Shrine Room, seen by over a million people on 17th Street from 2013 to 2024. More than 100 objects from the 12th to 21st centuries (thangkas, gilt bronzes, drums, conch trumpets) sit on Tibetan furniture in the order of a wealthy household shrine. The current selection follows the Geluk tradition and rotates every few years. It crossed the East River with its own doors and beams, a smoother move to Brooklyn than most Manhattan renters get.

Brooklyn's Asian art curator finds it even more transporting among the museum's white walls. The collective Our Ancestors Say No wants it returned, calling the objects stolen. It's in the second-floor Arts of Asia galleries, included in untimed general admission (pay what you can at the desk), with an audio guide on Bloomberg Connects.