China's First Emperor and the Terracotta Warriors
- Submitting institution
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University of Cambridge
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 12909
- Type
- M - Exhibition
- Venue(s)
- National Museums Liverpool, United Kingdom
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first exhibition
- -
- Year of first exhibition
- 2018
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- Yes
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- "China’s First Emperor and the Terracotta Warriors is lead output in this multi-component item, which includes the catalogue alongside contextual information enabling the reviewer to visualise the exhibition. Lin was invited to curate the 2018 exhibition at Liverpool’s World Museum based on his established research expertise and collaborations with colleagues in China during the 2012 Fitzwilliam exhibition, The Search for Immortality: Tomb Treasures of Han China. Lin worked with Xiuzhen Li (Terracotta Warrior Museum) as co-author of the catalogue, contributing three (of five) chapters and the introduction.
The 2007 British Museum exhibition, The First Emperor: China’s Terracotta Army, was the first UK presentation of this material. Lin’s research into these materials built on the foundation provided by this exhibition. However, Lin took a strictly chronological perspective, focusing on a continuous narrative drawn from materials excavated from Xi’an capital areas. The research underpinning the exhibition explored the material, martial and political history of one state region in western China across a significantly longer timeframe (600s BC–300s AD). By taking this approach, Lin was able to chart the development of a once peripheral state’s increase in power, by which in 221 BC it was able to unify China, creating a legacy for the Han dynasty (206 BC-AD 220).
Lin’s substantial knowledge of early archaeological materials, including bronze and jade, encouraged him to interrogate these objects to examine the First Emperor’s beliefs in life and afterlife. Through his selection of jade objects, including cups, plugs and discs (whose durability was associated with the eternal), Lin was able visually to represent a quest for immortality that, as he demonstrated, began before China’s unification and would obsess the First Emperor and subsequent generations. His presentation in the exhibition not only reflected Lin’s research but constituted a significant and original research output in its own right."
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -