The stars of the show arrived in wooden crates at Kennedy Airport on New Year’s Eve. They had already enjoyed a hugely popular run in Japan and were now embarking on a world tour.

All the attention is for 100 sculptures and engravings by Shinjo Ito, a renowned Buddhist artist and the founder of the Shinnyo-en order of Buddhism.

The images of Buddha are meant to inspire quiet contemplation, but they have also become the objects of artistic veneration. The show, “The Vision and Art of Shinjo Ito,” opens Thursday at Milk Gallery in Chelsea.

In Japan, 300,000 people went to see the exhibition during its 54-day run, but outside his home country, Mr. Ito, who died at 83 in 1989, is little known except to his followers, an estimated 900,000 worldwide. The show, which celebrates the centennial of Mr. Ito’s birth in 1906, is the first time his works have been presented to the general public outside of a religious context, in an artistic setting. Read More