Source: The Boston Globe

http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2005/02/18/encircling_art_with_spirituality/

On February 18, 2005 The Boston Globe reported, "in a contemporary art gallery at Wellesley College on Wednesday afternoon, about 100 people were sitting on canvas camp stools, gazing at an empty wooden platform painted the color of bricks... Victor Kazanjian, Wellesley's dean of religious and spiritual life, was introducing the artists who would soon be transforming that blank space into a work of art: eight Tibetan Buddhist nuns from Keydong Thuk-Che-Cho-Ling, a nunnery in Kathmandu. The nuns are the first women ever trained in the art of making a sand mandala, a symbolic circle that is central to Tibetan Buddhist spirituality and art but that has traditionally been made only by monks. They were scheduled to begin making a mandala in the Davis Center's gallery on Wednesday, but ended up delaying for a day because they had determined that yesterday would be more spiritually auspicious for the start of the project."