![]() ![]() The challenges for the exhibition curators were, at times, truly mind-boggling. To illustrate the life of a wall painting and trace its eleven-hundred-year history-from creation to deterioration to conservation-the exhibition recreates a portion of a wall from one of the caves. This exhibition highlights the modern history of the Mogao cave temples and presents their current situation, elaborating on the Getty Conservation Institute’s continuing collaboration with the Dunhuang Academy to address the preservation challenges which the site faces. 1 Through precious works of art loaned from European museums and the cave themselves, as well as photographs, videos, virtual immersion, and elaborate replica caves, the exhibition tells the story of one of the world’s greatest cultural treasures-its genesis and proliferation, its encounters with destructive threats from humans and nature, its miraculous survival over the course of more than fifteen hundred years, and most importantly, the intensive contemporary efforts to conserve and protect the caves for future generations. In May 2016, the Getty Center in Los Angeles will present an ambitious exhibition on the spectacular painted cave temples. This is possibly due to their remote location in western China, which could also account for the caves’ extraordinary survival across two millennia. While other historically significant places in China, such as the Great Wall, the Tomb of the First Emperor at Xi’an, and the Forbidden City, are well known to international audiences, the Mogao cave temples do not have the same renown. The caves’ location along one of the great trade routes of antiquity created an environment of artistic and cultural exchange between the diverse peoples who traversed this vast route, stretching from China to the Mediterranean Sea. Some twenty-five kilometers southeast of the oasis town of Dunhuang in the far northwest of China, hundreds of caves were carved into a cliff face along the Daquan River and lavishly decorated with wall paintings and sculptural works. Inscription in Cave 323, Tang dynasty (618–906 CE)īetween the fourth and fourteenth centuries CE elaborately painted cave temples at Mogao, an ancient Silk Road site on the edge of the Gobi desert, thrived as a Buddhist center connecting South and East Asia. Thereby he will be welcomed to the Dunhuang temples and be worshipped forever.” Those who believe deeply in the Buddha consider it possible that when he arrives the wind and waves will be calmed. “Wherever faith exists it will not be altered by human affairs. ![]()
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