Jeff Watt


Jeff Watt, is a scholar and curator of Himalayan and Tibetan Art and well known translator of Tibetan texts.
Since 1998 he has been the Director and Chief Curator of the Himalayan Art Resources website, a comprehensive on-line resource for Himalayan art and iconography that features thousands of artworks from Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, and Mongolia with a catalog of about 60,000 images written by Watt. From October 1999 until October 2007 Watt was also the founding Curator and leading scholar at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City which houses one of the largest collections of Himalayan and Tibetan art in North America.

Early life

Watt began studying Tibetan Buddhism in Seattle, Washington with Dezhung Rinpoche as a teenager and dropped out of school to take monk’s vows at the age of seventeen in 1974. He gave back his vows in 1985 but continued his studies and also undertook traditional retreats.

Publications