From the site of Museen Dahlem in Berlin we copied the following exhibition news:
1 April - 1 September 2009

If you don't want to read, watch the video from CCTV.com



The newly opened Chinese Cultural Centre (Berlin, Tiergarten) is organising an important exhibition on the art of the world renowned Mogao Caves in Dunhuang at the eastern hub of the Silk Road. Copies of two of the rock-cut temples have been recreated to original size and are now to go on view for the first time in Berlin.

Concurrent to the Musée Guimet's activities in Paris, the Museum of Asian Art is planning to host an exhibition to accompany the project, in which objects from the famous Turfan Collection will go on show to reveal the various close ties between the oasis towns of the Northern Silk Road. These objects are visually stunning and include silk fragments with ornamental patterns, fragments of paintings adorned with gold and clay sculptures. The accompanying texts in the exhibition rooms will shed new light in elucidating the close ties between the various workshops and reveal the cultural exchange that occurred in terms of iconography and style.

Going towards the concept entitled ‘On the way to the Humboldt Forum', this small exhibition will also serve as a model of things to come: as a joint cooperation not only with the new Chinese Cultural Centre in Berlin, but also with the Turfan Studies Academy Project of the Berlin Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Experts from the field of Turfan studies will place texts (manuscripts) and pictures in their relation to each other which will serve to guide people round the exhibition.

Until the middle of 2009, the International Dunhuang Project (IDP-CREA) will also be accessible on-line with a host of original photos, glass plate slides and drawings from the important historical photo collection available on the websites of the International Dunhuang Project (British Library, London) and our own picture archive.

The temporary show also accompanies the exhibition, ‘Transformations of Compassion - The Metamorphosis of a Buddhist Holy Figure', which is on display in the adjoining room.


In 2005, the curator (Dr. Lilla Russell-Smith) published a book on this particular subject (entitled: ‘Uygur Patronage in Dunhuang: Regional Art Centres on the Northern Silk Road', Leiden: Brill), and now for the first time ever, by way of several concrete examples, many interesting findings from her many years of research will also be made available to the wider general public.