Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art

Lighthouse Hill
Staten Island

Staten Island is the red-headed step-child of NYC boroughs. Most people “visit” the island as a means to get a good view of the Statue of Liberty for free. Few ever leave the boat terminal and most return back to Manhattan on the next ferry. But Staten Island does have a few sites worth venturing inland for. The best known is likely Snug Harbor Cultural Center which contains the 80-acre Staten Island Botanical Garden and Chinese Scholar’s Garden. Much less known is the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art. 

The Museum was founded in 1945 by Jacqueline Coblentz Klauber, a woman who ran an Upper East Side art gallery under the masculine pseudonym Jacques Marchais. Klauber’s great-grandfather traveled to the Orient several times as a tea merchant and brought back Tibetan figures which she played with as a child. This sparked a lifelong interest in all things Tibet despite the fact she herself never traveled to the region. 

Klauber collected and sold Tibetan, Indian, and Himalayan art at a time when only a few museums were beginning to collect Asian art. Over her lifetime she amassed a collection of over one thousand objects, including sculpture, musical instruments, and scroll paintings. She also formed a library of over 2000 books related to Tibetan art. The average viewer will be impressed by the collection, but in actuality most of the items are of middling quality. Far finer objects can be found at the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The collection is also poorly displayed—everything is jammed into two dimly-lit rooms decorated with Oriental tapestries.

The building and grounds, however, are lovely. Klauber designed the site herself based on the Potola at Lhasa, the Himalayan monastery that is the historic seat of the Dalai Lamas. The flat-roofed building features pagoda-style windows and is made from natural fieldstone. The buildings are surrounded by a Samadhi Garden, a terraced garden with gold fish and lotus ponds meant to inspire concentration and meditation.

The Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art is not the easiest place to get to, particularly if one is traveling on foot. It is located on the top of Lighthouse Avenue, which makes for splendid views, but a rather dangerous uphill climb on narrow, winding roads without sidewalks. On the plus side, you do get a regular view of the Staten Island Range Lighthouse during the trek to and from the Museum. It seems a bit silly to have a lighthouse so far inland, but then it also seems silly to have a museum of Tibetan art that is so hard to access. Unless it’s meant to be a metaphor for the difficult-to-access region of Tibet itself. In that case, the location is perfect.

The Museum of Tibetan Art isn’t too far from Historic Richmond Town (review to follow), and the two can easily be combined into a daytrip. Lighthouse enthusiasts can also figure out how to make it through the winding roads to the Range Lighthouse, but the lighthouse is not open to visitors. I advise against going to see only the Museum of Tibetan Art. While the location is picturesque, admission is cheap, and you’re likely to have the place completely to yourself, it’s not enough to warrant its own foray into Staten Island. 

www.tibetanmuseum.org