Toronto - The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is pleased to continue its tradition of rotating exhibitions in the redesigned Herman Herzog Levy Gallery with the intimate Heaven or Hell:

Images of Chinese Buddhist and Daoist Deities and Immortals, on display from Saturday, November 25, 2006 to May 2007.

Featuring more than 20 Chinese religious paintings and prints from the ROMs collection from the 10th through 20th centuries, many never-before-seen, Heaven or Hell expresses the prevailing Chinese religious thinking of the time. Several works in this exhibition depict the Buddhist and Daoist concepts of heaven or hell; the rest show deities and divine figures to whom believers turn for spiritual guidance.

During this period in Chinese religious history, traditional and Daoist theories of cause and retribution had been integrated with the Buddhist concept of karma (translated into English as deed or action), the human acts that induce this cause-and-effect chain. Human beings were rewarded or punished by a celestial power according to their conduct in life. While good people received blessings, evildoers (and their descendents) would be plagued with misfortune.