Last Chance: ‘The Ruins of Kočo’ at Museum of Asian Art, Berlin on view till January 8, 2017

Wood tile from ruin Alpha. Kočo, Xinjiang, China, 11th century.

(Courtesy: STATE MUSEUMS AT BERLIN, MUSEUM OF ASIAN ART)

From: Blouinartinfo Germany

The ongoing exhibition, titled 'The Ruins of Kočo: Traces of Wooden Architecture from the Ancient Silk Route', at the Museum of Asian Art, Berlin, will end on January 8, 2017. This is your last opportunity to check out the objects from the Tufran expeditions at the museum.

The temple city of Kočo (Chinese: Gaochang) is located near Turfan, in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, China. More than 100 years after the return of the Berlin researchers from Central Asia, new discoveries are still being made from that time on. Painted wooden beams inscribed with Buddhist texts that were brought back by Albert Grünwedel are now being considered as pieces of a ceiling and a door. This discovery prompted a team from the museum to visit the temple city of Kočo, where they searched for wood architecture and analyzed reports and photographs from three Turfan expeditions, which gave birth to new understandings of the monastery buildings that are on display at the exhibition. The exhibition will also showcase unique objects found in the three buildings analyzed in Kočo, which will act as a preview of Humboldt Forum. Painting, texts and sculptures in Buddhist and Manichaean monasteries, as well as architectural elements of everyday life, shed new light on that era.

The exhibition is on view at the  Museum of Asian Art, Lansstraße 8, 14195 Berlin, Germany.

Click on the Slideshow for a sneak peek at the exhibition.