CHINA'S TERRACOTTA WARRIORS IN PARIS???
 

does anybody know if the exhibit currently at the british museum is scheduled to move to paris in april 2008?

Here's link that shows the schedule...looks like they are headed to the US in May

http://current.newsweek.com/budgettr...isiting_t.html

It's going to the High Museum. I just saw the show in London on Saturday.

I saw it when it was in KY in 2000. It's certainly worth seeing, if you are in the area.

thanks for the information. i had read that they were going to paris after london, but that appears to be wrong. i'll be in paris in may so it sounded like a great opportunity. guess i'll drive to d.c. from nyc. appreciate the input.

I'm not sure what gave you the idea they will be in DC. High Museum is in Atlanta.

The exhibit will be in Santa Ana, CA, and Washington, DC, as well.

I don't know if the terracotta soldiers will go there. The wording below seems a little ambiguous. Of course the soldiers are objects, but why will the announcement read like this if this is the case?

I'm thinking you only get the artifacts in the exhibitions (i.e. the bronzes, jade, models) without the soldiers. But I don't know.

Reference:
http://www.high.org/experience/exhib...1=2980#Details

The First Emperor: China’s Terracotta Army opened at the British Museum on September 13, 2007, and will run through April 6, 2008. It will subsequently travel to the High Museum, where it will be on view from November 16, 2008, to April 26, 2009. The objects featured in the exhibition will also travel to the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana, Calif., the Houston Museum of Natural Science in Texas, and the National Geographic Museum in Washington, D.C., where they will be presented within a different curatorial framework.

I guess I'm wrong. The next destination is the Bowers Museum:

http://www.bowers.org/exhibits/terracotta/warriors.asp

So you do get the terracotta soldiers.

I have seen the warriors in situ and part of the appeal is the enormous scope of the site, not each individul statue (as interesting and detailed as each may be). I don't see how they can replicate the scope in a mobile museum exhibition, but, then again, I have not seen the current exhibit. Its obviously much more difficult, expensive and time consuming to travel to Xian, but, to me, seeing a few warriors on a traveling road show is dispiriting -- its as if one visited the Elgin marbles (as incredible as they are) and viewed them as a worthy substitute for a visit to the Parthenon.

Hopefully, the traveling exhibition will encourage some to visit Xian.

Michael

We can't all get to China of course, and the exhibit I saw at the British Museum was very well curated.
Even seeing only about 20 statues and replicas was quite enlightening of what kind of wacko must have demanded such a tribute to himself.
I liked seeing the detail of the statues up close and learning how many of the objects were made. The film was well done as well.
Although the exhibit in DC will be different, I will line up to see it again, especially since it is National Geographic doing the presenting.

I've also been down into the dig in Xi'an and seen the amazing army of Terracotta warriors up close. As Michael says, it's pretty amazing.

But I wouldn't dismiss the traveling exhibit. Many people will never have the opportunity to travel to central China and if this exhibition exposes more of us to a wider world, then I think it's very worthwhile.

I am off to see the 14 in Drenthe in a couple of weeks. I will never get to see them in China so this is an amazing chance for me.

My point is that the statues themselves are not that great -- its the collection, the acreage covered in statues that's impressive. The museum exhibit is as if someone plucked a dozen wildebeast from the Serengeti and transported them to a zoo -- its not the same as witnessing the great migration. To me, the warrior exhibit seems like another money making project -- are the museums charging a separate admission fee? I guess its better than nothing, but the individual statues pale in comparison to the site.

China's not that far or expensive -- while the air may be more expensive than flying across the Atlantic, its a lot cheaper to travel inside China than within Europe, and hopefully the museum exhibit will persuade some to make the trip. China is one of the great travel destinations.

Michael

I agree that it'd be better to see them in Xian (I've never been). I actually found the British Museum presentation a little disappointing. I was expecting more soldiers than there were.

But I also got the impression that you can't really see the soldiers very closely in Xian, so the British Museum exhibition is a plus in this regard.

I plan to write a little something about the experience and post it on the web. I'll report back here when it's ready. What I actually found amazing is that the Emperor's tomb itself is actually not yet excavated. Its existence has been well known from its physical appearance, and a Chinese historian Si Ma Qian gave an account around c. 100 BC. (I think in 89 BC?).

But Si Ma Qian didn't mention the terracotta soldier pits, which were excavated after a chance discovery in 1974.

What the tomb itself may possibly contain boggles the mind, I must say. But excavation won't be possible in our lifetime, most likely.

The purpose of the exhibition in London is to show, first the Emperor's success in unifying China into the first Empire and then his idea of immortality with aspects of his burial project including the Terracotta Warriors and other statues. Yes there are comparatively few statues but you can get very close and there are exhibits from the most recent excavations. So you can make your own decision on this. Yes these are fee paying exhibitions but the cost of moving and then exhibiting them securely is outside the realm of most of the world's museums. If it is a reference to the Chinese making money then it is intended as an exchange linked to the 2008 Olympics and a reciprocal exhibition sent to China from the BM. Obviously a visit to Xian would be great and this is a good preparation.