[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”726″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]We all love a good mystery—especially one based on a true story. Visit Bowers Museum’s upcoming exhibition, and prepare to be fascinated, baffled and downright stumped.
Opening October 19th, China’s Lost Civilization: The Mystery of Sanxingdui, features objects from what is being called “the ninth wonder of the world.” The collection is considered one of the most significant archaeological finds ever unearthed in China
Discovered during the summer of 1986 by construction workers in two huge sacrificial pits were an assortment of items, including ancient jades, tools and life-sized statues. The objects dated back to 1250-1100 BCE and caused scholars, who thought China’s cradle of civilization was 800 kilometers to the northeast, to rewrite Chinese history.
The bronze-cast statues of Sanxingdui found in the pits, some of which are 8 feet tall, are larger and stranger than anything ever unearthed. Masks representing human heads have odd supernatural features like animal-like ears and giant protruding pupils.
The Sanxingdui culture left no written record or human remains and appears to have existed for only about 350 years before it vanished.
“This exhibition rarely travels outside China and offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” says guest curator, Suzanne Cahill, who received her PhD from UC Berkeley in Classical Chinese Literature and has led art and archaeology tours to China. “The objects in the exhibit represent a high level of technical proficiency, yet are also unusual, even bizarre. The craftsmen who made them belonged to an early culture in the southwest of China about which nothing was known until these pieces were discovered. Archaeologists and historians are still trying to figure out how these people were related to the more familiar northern cultures of early China and how they fit into the broad story of Chinese civilization.”
“This exhibit represents one of archeology’s most interesting stories, and it’s exciting to see that archeology hasn’t revealed all of its secrets yet,” says Bowers Museum’s Vice President of Collections and Exhibition Development, Julie Perlin Lee. “The exhibit sheds light on a very sophisticated culture that took incredible pride in making artistically and visually compelling works of art out of bronze,” she says. “This exhibit raises many questions, such as how a great civilization could get under the radar. It’s equally compelling to wonder about the purposeful abandonment of the items in the pit, because they obviously took great care to create them.”
Nearly 80 years old, Bowers Museum located in Santa Ana was the first museum in Orange County. Today the facility, which Perlin Lee calls a “mini-Smithsonian,” has 125,000 objects in its permanent collection and holds around 10 exhibitions throughout each year by partnering with great museums throughout the world. A 2008 exhibition of the Terracotta Warriors from China drew a quarter of a million visitors to the museum.
China’s Lost Civilization exhibition runs from October 19, 2014 to March 15, 2015 and will feature lectures from top scholars and documentary screenings. Bowers Museum is located at 2002 N. Main Street, Santa Ana, 714-567-3600. Visit www.bowers.org for more information.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
“This exhibition rarely travels outside China and offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” says guest curator, Suzanne Cahill, who received her PhD from UC Berkeley in Classical Chinese Literature and has led art and archaeology tours to China. “The objects in the exhibit represent a high level of technical proficiency, yet are also unusual, even bizarre. The craftsmen who made them belonged to an early culture in the southwest of China about which nothing was known until these pieces were discovered. Archaeologists and historians are still trying to figure out how these people were related to the more familiar northern cultures of early China and how they fit into the broad story of Chinese civilization.”
“This exhibit represents one of archeology’s most interesting stories, and it’s exciting to see that archeology hasn’t revealed all of its secrets yet,” says Bowers Museum’s Vice President of Collections and Exhibition Development, Julie Perlin Lee. “The exhibit sheds light on a very sophisticated culture that took incredible pride in making artistically and visually compelling works of art out of bronze,” she says. “This exhibit raises many questions, such as how a great civilization could get under the radar. It’s equally compelling to wonder about the purposeful abandonment of the items in the pit, because they obviously took great care to create them.”
Nearly 80 years old, Bowers Museum located in Santa Ana was the first museum in Orange County. Today the facility, which Perlin Lee calls a “mini-Smithsonian,” has 125,000 objects in its permanent collection and holds around 10 exhibitions throughout each year by partnering with great museums throughout the world. A 2008 exhibition of the Terracotta Warriors from China drew a quarter of a million visitors to the museum.
China’s Lost Civilization exhibition runs from October 19, 2014 to March 15, 2015 and will feature lectures from top scholars and documentary screenings. Bowers Museum is located at 2002 N. Main Street, Santa Ana, 714-567-3600. Visit www.bowers.org for more information.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
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© Julie Bawden-Davis