The terracotta army of Xi'an

[Bounty]

After my GPS decided the quickest route between two Belgian cities is via Holland, I did in the end make it to a rather neat exhibition: a tiny little archaeological museum in a tiny little town pulled enough strings to display ~200 artefacts from the burial site of the first Emperor of China, along with a delegation of the famous Terracotta Army.

This shit is amazing. Seriously. Even the few trinkets in the exhibition were absolutely mind-blowing. I wish I could post pictures of everything there - the jewellery, the miniatures, the weapons - but unfortunately flash wasn't allowed and all the items were placed in really really dark rooms (yeah, sell those catalogues!). No flash and no tripod = fiddling with exposure times and trying to keep a steady hand = shitty pictures.

Here's the salvageable ones:



One of the oldest Chinese coins



















These guys aren't originals, they're made to show what the painted warriors looked like:

[The Grim Squeaker]

There are some seriously awesome shots there! Awesome .
The Terracotta warriors exhibit was fully booked up when I was in the UK, alass .

[Darth Fanboy]

YOU GOT PICTURES? Fuck they were insanely cracking down on those when the warriors were on display here in Orange County.

[Phantasee]

Bounty is a master at sneaky picture-taking. You should ask about the ones he took of your mum

On Topic: That's totally awesome. I hope I can catch an exhibit near me in the near future, do you know where I can find some sort of tour information? Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton (lol) would be my targets, but Toronto would work if I could time it for a trip in a couple years.

Also: was that the GPS you got for Christmas? Maybe someone wants to send you to Holland for a reason?

[Bounty]

It's what you get when you set it to "fast route" instead of "short route". See, there's two ways to get to the museum: the scenic route through Belgium with a 50km/h speed limit, or the highway into Holland and another highway to double-back at 120km/h. In distance it's a bit longer, but in travel time it's a bit shorter.

Fuck they were insanely cracking down on those when the warriors were on display here in Orange County.

Flash wasn't allowed, but there was nothing about "no pictures". It's not like you could take really good ones anyway; more than half of the ones I took came out as a dark gray blur.

do you know where I can find some sort of tour information?

I'm not sure the exhibit tours *as a whole*; the artefacts get lent out to museums (I think the British Museum had them last), but I doubt there's a set order in which they travel.

[Darth Fanboy]

There are multiple sets also I believe.


Bounty I think the other big part of why they didn't allow pictures where I was is because it was at an art museum. But for a piece of human history like this they really should have given people a chance as opposed to saying "Here buy a picture we already took in the gift shop!" This isn't some shitbug painting of the nearby beach from some local twat that has already been done 10,000 times, these are the fucking Terracotta Warriors!

Those pictures you salvaged are nice, thanks for sharing.

[Lusankya]

Actually, the flash probably wouldn't be good for the warriors. After they got dug up, the light and air ruined the paint quite quickly. Some of the originals still have a bit of paint left, so they probably don't want to ruin what they have any more than is necessary.

That's why in China, they're leaving some pits unexcavated, so that hopefully one day they can find a way to preserve the painting job permanently.

[Darth Mall]

There are multiple sets also I believe.


Bounty I think the other big part of why they didn't allow pictures where I was is because it was at an art museum. But for a piece of human history like this they really should have given people a chance as opposed to saying "Here buy a picture we already took in the gift shop!" This isn't some shitbug painting of the nearby beach from some local twat that has already been done 10,000 times, these are the fucking Terracotta Warriors!

Those pictures you salvaged are nice, thanks for sharing.

I've never had an issue in an art museum with pictures, just no flash allowed.

A couple of summers ago I was in China and went to the dig site. The site is absolutely giant with pit after pit of statues. It's unreal. Some of my pictures are here.

They had a few buildings over each pit that was being dug up, and then there was also a display of all the finer things that had been brought up.

[Bounty]

There are, basically, two reasons to disallow flash: one is the conservation of artefacts that are sensitive to light, the other is the conservation of the museum's profits by encouraging people to buy the catalogue.

The warriors on display didn't have any pigment left at all as far as I could make out. Now, I can still fully understand not allowing flash near them - they're too precious to even risk damaging them further and even microscopic pigment remains can be the basis for a full reocnstruction. But the other artefacts were precious metals, jade and stone, most of them placed in brightly-lit cases. I don't know enough about conservation to make a definite statement, but the materials and presentation didn't suggest to me that they were particularly light-sensitive; at any rate not more sensitive than artefacts that are on public display with flash photography allowed in other museums.

But the "catalogue" comment was mostly sour grapes, not a criticism of the museum. I wouldn't take any risks either with the Chinese government breathing down my neck

[Phantasee]

I went to a museum in Naples that had a lot of stuff from Pompeii, including a mosaic of a Greek painting of Alexander the Great. They had a huge painting that was a reconstruction based on the mosaic. I understand why they didn't let us take flash photos, though, even though I really wish I had been able to (I had a huge crush on Alex back in the day).

The Sistine Chapel has similar restrictions. No flash photography of the roof. Didn't stop people from trying though.

[Chardok]

Whoa whoa whoa - those are the Terra Cotta Warriors from the tomb of Shi Huangdi?! I mean - Ithink that's what you said I just....can't believe it! Just....out there like that? There's one that even still has paint on it. That's Kriffing amazing and thank you so much for posting that!! I've only ever seen them on Engineering An Empire (Hosted by one Peter Weller of SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY(!) - Who knew Robocop had a degree?)

You're Jawsome, Bounty!

[Bounty]

Just....out there like that?

The Maaseik museum has... connections, apparently. They were allowed to hand-pick artefacts to exhibit. A couple years ago they even managed to get Ötzi over.

Paint on the warriors... where? The smaller ones have pigment, yes, but IIRC they're from a different tomb (it's a damn shame we had to shuffle through that part of the exhibit so fast - it's hard to focus on an audio guide when there's umbrellas prodding you in the back).

And those pictures: that's not zoom. The warriors were on a pedestal you could walk around, just outside of arms' reach. You can see some visitors standing next to them in the third picture.

[Chardok]

Looks like img_1996 - the dudes (unarmored infantrymen?) seem to be painted/pigmented still - even after 2500+ years!

[Bounty]

Heh, I didn't even notice that before. As I said, we were shuffled through that part of the exhibition pretty quick - a shame, too, since the only thing after that bit was very poorly narrated movie about the palace (yeah, great idea guys - put all the historical and geographic context *at the end*. That's like, a Museum 101 mistake... then again, they only had a small church to set everything up).

[Dartzap]

I'm fairly sure they will be magically appearing in the British Museum sometime this, uh, next year as well. I might just save some money to go and have a ganders.

Edit, huh, that's me going insane then.The exhibition up there was earlier this year! Me and and my damned luck, that

[Darth Fanboy]

I've never had an issue in an art museum with pictures, just no flash allowed.

Bowers museum In Santa Ana, CA has a far more facist policy. I can understand a no flash policy, but no cameras at all was depressing.

[Murazor]

YOU GOT PICTURES? Fuck they were insanely cracking down on those when the warriors were on display here in Orange County.

I can say the same when I saw some of them in a very large "China" exhibition in the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao... and that exhibition only had a couple of warriors, plus a horse. And those had no trace of the original policromy.