Today sees the opening of the British Museum’s groundbreaking exhibition about the First Emperor: China’s Terracotta Army held within the iconic Round Reading Room in the Centre of the Great Court. When I came into work this morning, there were queues for the ticket booths and the Museum has sold 135,000 advance tickets (quoted in the Times today). The Museum is releasing 500 tickets everyday at 9:45am for people to visit the exhibition if they have not booked in advance (it costs £12 and concessions are available.)
The show is beautifully shown in the round Reading Room, which has been temporarily converted into an exhibition gallery. - Richard Dorment (Daily Telegraph)
Our office went to the staff preview last week and only one of our members had seen them in their original setting (when they were 6) and it left all impressed by the content of the exhibition which has been designed by Metaphor and is curated by Jane Portal (you can listen to a Guardian podcast of an interview with Jane). The unique selling point of this exhibition, is the story behind the First Emperor Qin Shihuang rather than just an exhibition about the Terracotta army. The exhibition contains original figures shipped all the way from China and some replicas to enhance the visual impact and a range of artefacts that tell the story in more detail. (In all there are 20 figures in the exhibit and numerous objects backed up with multimedia displays.)
A particular favourite that we all noted was the replica model of the creative forces at work when fabricating a warrior, another notable artefact is the stone armour suit that weighs as much as some of the weights I lift. Neil MacGregor says about the armour:
It is thought that the stone armour played a key role in the protection of the emperor from attacks from evil spirits in the afterlife.
My RSS feed has found over 200 references to the exhibition in the International online press over the last week, it even features in Hello Magazine! A list of some of these is given below:
- Evening Standard - this article highlights the fact that the show is going head to head with the King Tut exhibit at the O2 dome.
- The Daily Telegraph - a very thorough review
- De Spiegel - another thorough piece with comments from Chinese curatorial staff.
- China View - photos from the opening
- Bloomberg
- The Economist
- The New Statesman
The Museum has a very full and varied programme of events to accompany the exhibition with particular highlights being:
- The Curators introduction - free lecture on the 22nd.
- The film of the exhibition - various dates
- The Moon festival
It has to be one of the must see events of the year! I’d book early if you want to get in and see it, and if you’re a London Underground user, you might get your hands on a limited edition Oystercard holder. To read more on this, follow links within this article or read the official BM press release.
OpenCalais helped to tag this with: Bloomberg • British Museum • china • China's Terracotta Army • Evening Standard • GBP • Great Court • Moon festival • Neil Macgregor • O2 dome • Qin Shihuang • Richard Dorment • Terracotta Army • the Daily Telegraph • The Times
Possibly related posts: Terracotta army half-term events • Hadrian exhibition at the British Museum • Crack the Codex at the British Museum - family event •
