Treasures of Ancient China

The exhibition is curated by Tian Kai, director of the Henan Provincial Museum. It presents masterworks from the collection of the museum, one of the most important in the People’s Republic of China, and aims to illustrate the passage from the Han Dynasty - the time when present day China started taking shape -to the Golden Age of the Tang Dynasty (581-907 AD). The exhibition includes over 100 objects, including a funerary suit made of 2,000 pieces of jade sewn together with gold thread, lacquerware, terracottas, vases, objects made of gold, silver and jade. The selected works illustrate the extraordinary prosperity and cultural openness which characterized this period, when the capital of the Middle Kingdom, present day Xi’An, was the crossroads of the world. The city was visited by ambassadors from all over the world and was populated by over one million people. The Han dynasty (206 bC-220 AD) is credited with a critical role in Chinese history: it is when the Empire of the Middle Kingdom was consolidated.