The reason for my recent trip to Liverpool was to go to the Terracotta Warriors exhibition at the World Museum. The exhibition is on until 28 October and proving so popular that they’ve had to extend the opening hours – I booked over two months in advance and even then didn’t have a lot of choice about what time I could go. But if you can get to it it is absolutely worth it and a fabulous exhibition.
At £14.50 for an adult ticket it is a reasonable price for what you get to see (especially as the rest of the museum is free entry) with over 180 artefacts spanning 1,000 years of Chinese history, many of which have never been on display in the UK before.
The whole exhibition was very well organised and curated. Tickets are for timed entry and to ensure things don’t get too crowded you’re moved through to a room to watch a brief video about China (I actually thought this was completely uninformative but serves its purpose as a way of crowd control). This lasts about four minutes, enough I presume for the group ahead to move forward a little before you are allowed into the exhibit proper.
Some of my favourite artefacts include the above and below, bronze chariots from the Qin dynasty (221-206BC), one of many such objects in the Emperor’s daily life that he had buried with him. Half the size of the original chariots they were buried in a wooden chamber 20 metres west of the tomb mound and likely to have been intended for the Emperor to use to travel around the afterlife.
Other interesting artefacts were this bronze goose, one of 46 birds discovered with 15 terracotta musicians in a pit near the Emperor’s mausoleum. The pit was designed to represent an imperial garden with geese, swans and musicians for the Emperor to enjoy in the afterlife.
This fascinating model depicts the techniques used to make each warrior, all of them unique in design of its features and pose.
The Golden Horse of Maoling, a gilded bronze horse discovered by farmers in a field near the museum of Emperor Wu in 1981 is another beautiful object on display.
A really excellent exhibition, you can find more photos here.
Louise Jayne's Blog 