About This Object

This is a scrapbook that is still currently in the process of being created by the contributor about the Bendix Lama Temple. This temple was owned by Indiana University despite never being brought to campus, and represents the connections between people with Bloomington and Southbend, where it was constructed. The contributor became fascinated with the temple when she was the India Studies and Tibetan Studies librarian here at IU, and she is creating this scrapbook for her son and grandson. It contains photographs, book clippings, and a watercolor picture of the temple.

It’s a scrapbook, mainly about the temple that IU once owned for many years which was never erected on the Bloomington campus, but it has connections with South Bend and Bloomington. I made it and starting in 2016 and I’m still working on it and it’s a gift for my family for my son and grandson and on and on I hope. I used to be the India Studies and Tibetan Studies librarian and it originated in research in the IU archives that got more and more interesting as I saw the connections. It had photographs, historic photographs. It has some things I wasn’t sure about the rights to. You know, clippings from books and so on so I am not digitizing them. It has watercolor drawings; it has the main part I’m giving to the creative commons is chronology of the temple that I gleaned from the IU archives and from other sources so the biggest part is about ten pages that summarize that. American Chinese, Germans, Swedes, and Tibetans with others of unknown ethnicity play roles in this consternation scrapbook about historical preservation and lack of preservation. —Andrea Singer

The World’s Fair, This Temple, and Indiana University

A History Harvest Perspective

This temple represents how Indiana University participates in both national and international contexts. While it is a replica of China’s Golden Temple of Jeholwas and spent a lot of time exhibited at the New York’s World’s Fair in the 1920’s and 1930’s, its roots are in the midwest. It was first built in Chicago from copper shillings from South Bend, Indiana and Indiana limestone. With various owners over the course of its existence, IU is now its fifth owner.¹.