Culture and commerce
Exhibit of treasures from China's Silk Road
Archived article from Oct 12, 2001
By Carla Capizzi
How much impact do cultures have on one another? How about religions? Is there really such a thing as ethnic identity?
Debates like these, usually heard in classrooms, are likely to spring up in a more unusual setting this fall: an exhibition of Chinese artifacts curated by Annette Juliano at the Asia Society galleries in New York. The exhibit, "Monks and Merchants: Silk Road Treasures from Northwest China, 4th-7th Century," opens Oct. 13 and will run through Jan. 6.
Juliano, chair of the visual and performing arts department on the Newark campus and an expert on Asian art, and her collaborator, Judith Lerner, collected 120 spectacular artifacts that show the interaction of religion, trade and culture along China's Silk Road. The collection, which took three years to gather, includes objects that were produced in foreign countries and found their way to China, as well as Chinese artifacts that show strong Western influence.
The Asia Society exhibition, predicts Juliano, will be controversial since it shows the results of assimilation and adaptation of foreign influences on Chinese culture. "The exhibition will raise all sorts of questions about ethnic identity and politics, and ultimately asks, 'What does it mean to be Chinese?'" she says.
Northwest China was crisscrossed by trade routes and was a major entry point to China from the west. Merchants, sometimes accompanied by their families, traveled throughout the area and often settled down, bringing artwork, clothing, religious items and other objects from their homelands. The exhibition will include Byzantine coins, Sassanian glass, Buddhist cave sculptures, textiles, painted tiles, Persian rings and other jewelry, a sword, and religious articles such as burial objects associated with Zoroastrianism.
For Juliano, the exhibition is the culmination of a dream dating back to 1997. The following year, the Asia Society agreed to support her exhibition plans, and she and Lerner began a series of trips to China for the sometimes daunting task of locating artifacts from public collections throughout Northwest China. This is a rugged area that is partially covered by the Gobi Desert -- agrarian in some areas and almost inaccessible in others. Only one item was located outside China, a letter dating back to A.D. 316 that had been found in the desert in the 19th century and stored in a British museum.
"The items we selected not only had to fit the theme of religion, commerce and culture, but we also wanted them to be unusual, interesting and very high quality," notes Juliano. The materials collected have never before been exhibited outside of China.
Collecting the materials was only one part of Juliano's task; she also wrote the bulk of the exhibition catalog -- in a breakneck six-month period -- and took many of the color photographs used to illustrate it.
"Monks and Merchants: Silk Road Treasures from Northwest China, 4th-7th Century" will herald the reopening of the Asia Society's expanded and renovated galleries at 725 Park Ave. in Manhattan. It will be at the Asia Society from Oct. 13 through Jan. 6. The exhibition then will travel the United States, beginning with the Norton Gallery in Palm Beach, before the items are returned to China in October 2002.
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