The British Museum Exhibition ‘Silk Roads’: A Spotlight on Tang-dynasty China

This is an in-person event hosted by the International Centre for Chinese Heritage and Archaeology (ICCHA), which will take place in Room 612, 6th floor of the UCL Institute of Archaeology. This seminar is free and open to all. All welcome! 

Abstract 

On 26 September 2024, the British Museum launched its major exhibition Silk Roads, exploring the movement of people, objects and ideas across Afro-Eurasia from 500 to 1000 CE. This is a significant period in the history of cross-cultural connectivity that includes the Tang-dynasty (618–907) China, celebrated for its cosmopolitanism. The exhibition brings together over 300 objects from the British Museum collection, as well as 29 national and international lenders. The exhibition provided many welcome opportunities to build on existing partnerships and develop new ones. In this talk, the co-curator of Silk Roads will discuss how the exhibition came together, and approaches the team took, with a focus on sections and topics in the exhibition related to Tang China and its connections with the wider world. It will highlight some of the key objects on display and the collaborations that made the exhibition possible, including a project with colleagues in China to reconstruct several textiles from Cave 17, Mogao Caves, Dunhuang, based on scientific research and traditional making techniques. 

About the Speaker

Dr Luk Yu-Ping is Basil Gray Curator: Chinese Paintings, Prints, and Central Asian Collections in the Asia Department at the British Museum. Previously, she was Curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Project Curator for the British Museum's exhibition Ming: 50 Years That Changed China, and Assistant Professor in the Department of Visual Studies at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. She completed her PhD at the University of Oxford. She is the co-curator of the British Museum’s Silk Roads exhibition and co-author of the new book Silk Roads (2024). 

Future ICCHA events - save the dates

• 27 February 2025: Prof Maurizio Marinelli (UCL Institute for Global Prosperity) History, Memory, and Heritage Value in Tianjin as a River-City
• 12 March 2025: Prof Francesca Bray (Professor Emerita of Social Anthropology, University of Edinburgh) ICCHA Annual Public Lecture