Fives Ways to Celebrate the Year of the Fire Bird!

It might feel like ages ago that you packed up your holiday decorations and threw away your 2017-shaped glasses, but on the other side of the globe, New Year celebrations are just being planned. Losar, the Tibetan word for “new year,” is celebrated across multiple countries in the Himalayan region with a three-day celebration filled with traditional food, dancing, and offerings for a better and healthier new year.

Every year, the Rubin Museum hosts a family-friendly Losar celebration like no other. This year, we plan to bring in the Himalayan New Year in style with a special day full of tours, food demonstrations, and art-making. Here are five ways you and your family can celebrate Losar at the Rubin:

Listen

Experience our museum like never before with the celebratory sounds of Tibetan musicians playing alongside the beautiful artwork in our Gateway to Himalayan Art exhibition.

Learn

Attend a Losar Museum tour, catered to families and designed to highlight themes of the New Year: Tours begin at 1:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. at the bottom of the Museum’s iconic spiral staircase.

Taste

Participate in one of the three food demonstrations, each showing you and your family how to make the traditional Tibetan Losar pastry dish, Khapse. You may also enjoy it with a complimentary sample of yak butter tea.

Create

Join in on one of our four art making activities in our Education Center.

• To honor the incoming year of the Fire Bird, you can create a feathery mask to wear around the museum.
• Put together your own Guthuk-inspired doughy divination with beads, spices, and herbs. Guthuk is a special Losar soup meant to drive out negativity and misfortunes of the past year.

• Use symbols and images to represent your new years resolutions on your a personalized prayer flag.
• Dip-dye stalks of barley to pay a colorful homage to the significant role highland barley plays in Tibetan culture.

After some art-making, pop back into the museum galleries for ongoing sketching activities in our Nepalese Seasons exhibition on the 5th Floor.

Chant

Once you’ve participated in all the Losar festivities in the Rubin, join other families and visitors in a collective OM chant at the spiral staircase at 3:30. Representing “everything and nothing,” the beginning and the end, the sacred sound of OM will close off a day of festivities and welcome in a bright, healthy New Year!

This year, the Rubin celebrates Losar on Sunday, February 19th. Bring your family, friends, and loved ones for a day of art and celebration that everyone can enjoy. See you there!