Five hundred ancient Roman cultural relics came to China "alone"
China News Weekly reporter / Ni Wei
Published in the 1056th issue of "China News Weekly" magazine on August 15, 2022
503 pieces of Italian cultural relics crossed the sea to China, but no Italian escorted them.
In the global exhibition industry, this is an incredible thing.
These cultural relics come from 26 museums in Italy, and many of them are the first time to leave the country, including some extremely fragile glass, bronze pieces and sculptures, all of which have a history of nearly 2,000 years.
The cultural relics transportation company packed these cultural relics in Italy, and then transported them to Beijing. The staff of the National Museum of China carefully unpacked, handed over, and set up the exhibition. The whole process was shown to the Italian side in real time through video on iPad.
During the period, the National Expo and 26 Italian museums also communicated repeatedly through hundreds of emails to complete the point-and-click and exhibition arrangement process.
Under the epidemic, personnel exchanges between China and Italy have been hindered, but this "Origin of Italy - Ancient Roman Civilization Exhibition" has finally opened at the National Museum of China after two years of delay.
This is the first international exhibition held by the National Expo in Beijing after the epidemic.
The theme of this exhibition focuses on the 4th to 1st centuries BC, a key period in the gradual "Romanization" of the Italian peninsula, during which the Italian peninsula achieved political and cultural unity.
40G video and hundreds of emails
The child is going to go away, can the mother not worry?
"At the beginning, they also hoped that someone would come, but it was difficult to communicate with people. They also trusted the National Museum more, so they adopted the method of video point-and-click." Pan Qing, the Chinese curator of this exhibition and the director of international and art exhibitions of the National Museum told "China News Weekly".
Italy and China have a close cooperation between the museum circles of the two countries.
The Rijksmuseum has collaborated with Italy on seven exhibitions over the past decade, and both sides are well aware of the other's capabilities.
In 2018, the National Expo cooperated with 21 museums in Italy and 17 museums in China to jointly hold the exhibition "No Questions from the West to the East - From the Silk Road to the Renaissance", which systematically displayed the cultural and artistic exchanges between China and Italy between the 13th and 16th centuries. situation.
In 2019, the "Return - Italy's Return of China's Lost Cultural Relics Exhibition" exhibited 796 smuggled cultural relics returned by Italy to China, showing the achievements of the two governments' joint efforts to protect cultural relics.
There is a 6-hour time difference between Italy and Beijing, and the delivery period is set from 3:00 pm to 12:00 in the middle of the night every day. The staff of the National Expo cooperates with their Italian counterparts in real time.
Along with the cultural relics, there are thousands of pages of point-and-click documents that record the detailed information of each cultural relic, including the characteristics of the cultural relics, health status, damage and so on.
During the check-in, the staff of the National Expo will confirm the status of each cultural relic when it is unpacked, and update it on the check-in document.
There are four groups of people checking in every day, and the cultural guards and translators are also present at the same time. Through the iPad, the Italian colleagues can see every action up close.
He Shuyi, a curatorial assistant at the National Museum, introduced to China News Weekly, first show them the state of the box when it arrived here, and whether the seal is in good condition, then tear off the seal, take out the screws, open the box, and check the transportation of each cultural relic. After the state, take them out one by one and put them on the table to check whether there are any new scars and whether they are broken.
Video point-to-point communication takes at least 20% more time than live point-to-point interaction, and a total of more than 40G video files are recorded.
When there is a discrepancy between the status of the cultural relics and the submitted documents, they will stop, take photos and send an email to ask the Italian side to confirm, “It takes an hour or two to confirm that they will sign the report, and the emails have been sent in total. Hundreds of letters." He Shuyi said.
In the face of such a cumbersome situation, it is necessary to insist on holding the exhibition, which stems from the special significance of this exhibition.
In 2019, China and Italy decided to mutually host the China-Italy Year of Culture and Tourism in 2020. One of the important contents is to jointly hold an exchange exhibition reflecting the cultural origins of the two countries.
The subsequent epidemic delayed the China-Italy Year of Culture and Tourism, and finally restarted it this year.
As the flagship project of the China-Italian Culture and Tourism Year, "The Origin of Italy-Ancient Roman Civilization Exhibition" has also been put on the agenda.
This exhibition was previously exhibited in Italy. It is a big exhibition organized by more than 20 museums in Italy. It not only has rich exhibits, but also has a considerable academic level.
This is equivalent to dozens of museums in China joining together to hold an exhibition from the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods to the unification of the Qin Dynasty, and try to clarify the historical evolution and cultural changes of this period.
"The most troublesome thing is that these head sculptures are like opening a blind box every time they are unpacked." Deng Lu, the designer of the National Expo Exhibition, said, pointing to more than a dozen sculptures in the "Faces of All Living Beings" unit.
Sculptures are compactly placed together, presenting ancient Roman creatures.
Among them, there was a couple, who had to be placed next to each other according to the Italian requirements.
Since these sculptures come from different museums, the fixing methods are different. Some are attached with a bottom bracket, some have no bottom bracket, some are fixed on the bottom bracket with metal sheets, and some are run straight down with metal pipes.
In order to fix them neatly on the special pedestal made by Guobo, the exhibitors must cut the pedestal with a suitable height on the spot according to the characteristics of each sculpture, and adjust the fixing method of each sculpture. The most troublesome sculpture has been repeatedly communicated. Installed in three days.
And what worried them most were some bronze fragments.
Ancient Chinese bronzes were mostly heavy and sturdy ritual vessels, while ancient Roman bronzes were more practical. Many were used as belts, armors, and protective gear for warriors. After a thousand years, they became extremely fragile, and some were broken into pieces.
National Expo staff must carefully lift them out of the box to avoid any harm.
But the accident still occurred.
During transportation, the two scroll-shaped double handles of an alabaster wine jar broke and fell off when the box was opened.
The Italian counterparts were very distressed, but they could not bear to let the wine jars across the ocean fall asleep in the box and lost the opportunity to meet the Chinese audience.
After consideration, they suggested to communicate online with the cultural relics restorers of the National Museum and Cultural Protection Institute through a video conference. In the end, the double handle was restored by the National Museum and exhibited as planned.
"Italian counterparts have confidence in our restoration level," Pan Qing said. "The successful cooperation between China and Italy this time shows that video point-to-point communication is an international exhibition work model that can be adopted in the post-epidemic era based on mutual trust."
Stories the Italians want to tell
"The Origin of Italy - Ancient Roman Civilization Exhibition" is not a "bright treasure" exhibition. The selection of exhibits and the design of exhibition lines are planned according to academic standards, trying to briefly and comprehensively tell the ins and outs of Italy and ancient Roman civilization.
The exhibition begins with a stone altar that also speaks of the legendary origins of Rome.
The side of the altar is engraved with a mythical image of a she-wolf nursing her twins.
On the streets of Rome today, the female wolf raising babies is the most common sculptural image, and the pattern of the Roman city emblem is also drawn from this myth.
According to legend, after the ancient Greeks conquered Troy in the 7th and 8th centuries BC, some of the Trojans escaped and established the city of Albalonga in Italy.
At that time, Sylvia, the daughter of the ruler of Albalonga, gave birth to twins with Mars, the god of war. Then a coup occurred in the city, and the twins were thrown into the Tiber River. Due to the will of God, they were killed by a mother The wolf was rescued and fed with goat's milk.
When they grew up, the brothers became powerful and leaders, and decided to build a new city in the land where the wolves were fed.
But both of them wanted to name the new city after themselves, so there was a conflict, Romulus killed Remus and named the new city after the first letters of the name - the Latin letters R0MA - this is the city of Rome. origin.
In real history, before the 1st century BC, the Italian peninsula was in a state of free development of various nations, of which the Roman Republic was the most powerful kingdom.
Until the 1st century BC, which is equivalent to the Western Han Dynasty in China, the Roman Republic entered a time of crisis. After a series of bloody wars, Augustus, the adopted son of Julius Caesar, unified the Italian peninsula, and the tragic war accelerated the brewing of the peninsula. long-standing unification.
The nation unified by Rome has experienced the process of "Romanization" in many aspects, such as language, law, religious customs, way of life, business methods, funeral rites, etc., showing a unified cultural characteristic.
This exhibition selects this journey from diversity to unity.
"This exhibition is not an inter-library exchange, but a gift from one country to another. So they chose a macro historical perspective, which they think can represent the story they want to tell." The Chinese curator of this exhibition, the National Museum Pan Qing, director of international and art exhibitions, said.
The exhibition was completed under the guidance of the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the Italian Ministry of Culture, and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, and was personally curated by Massimo Orsana, Director of the Museum Department of the Italian Ministry of Culture, and Stephen Verge, Director of the National Museum of Rome. .
Exhibit descriptions are all written by Italians and faithfully translated by the Chinese side.
The descriptions of these exhibits are very detailed, each with up to two or three hundred words, and are often slightly extended to explain the broader historical background behind the cultural relics.
In the center of the exhibition hall, a "Tomb of the Two Warriors" dating from the 3rd century BC is very strikingly restored.
Inside the huge glass cover, various types of funerary objects are placed layer by layer, and a pair of broken bronze armor stands in the center.
At the time, separate burials were held for the two local warriors, who were then buried in the same large tomb.
According to local burial customs, in order to make room for the second burial, the remains of the first deceased will be removed along with the funerary items and stacked in a corner of the tomb.
The second tomb owner is depicted as a knight wearing an exotic helmet, and the burial is unusually rich, including the precious Canossa vase.
It is worth mentioning that in front of the armor is a huge foot bath tub for funerary objects, and the bottom and surrounding areas of the basin are painted with bright colors.
When I was in my hometown of Italy, this foot tub was always facing up on its back, but this time, a sloping bracket was specially customized for the National Expo, so that the basin could be tilted forward, which is more suitable for the audience to watch.
The Italian side greatly appreciates the design of the bracket, and has already made an order with the Chinese counterparts. After the exhibition, the bracket will be brought back to Italy.
"The patterns in the basin are very grand and representative of the culture of that era. We hope that the audience can see these patterns more clearly." said Deng Lu, the exhibition designer, "This bracket and some other brackets will serve as a small thought. We are also very happy to send it to our Italian counterparts.”
In the formation of ancient Roman civilization, Greek culture cast a far-reaching influence.
Before the establishment of the Roman Republic in 509 BC, Greek culture had been widely spread in the Mediterranean region, and then the ancient Romans accepted and adopted Greek culture in large numbers, resulting in Greco-Roman culture.
At the beginning of the exhibition, corresponding to the altar is a bronze sculpture from Greece - a boxer at rest (replica), sculpted by an Athenian sculptor in the 1st century BC and now in the National Museum of Rome.
This display layout is by the Italians, who hoped to show the important presence of Greek culture in ancient Rome.
Another bronze sculpture, the Resting Statue of Hercules, was first sculpted by the Greek sculptor Lysipos.
Lysipos created 1,500 bronze sculptures, but none of the originals survive.
The resting statue of Hercules that went to China this time was imitated again based on a stone imitation in the Roman period.
The resting statue of Hercules has produced many imitations one after another, and it has also become the standard statue of the hero Hercules.
In Greek mythology, Hercules had to perform 12 drudgery in order to atone for his sins, the first of which was to skin the giant lion.
This statue shows the moment of exhaustion after he defeated the giant lion and skinned it.
Some of the statues in the exhibition are in the form of naked exhibitions. In order to avoid being touched by children, a half-meter-wide base is specially made to keep a slight distance from the audience.
"We want to give the audience a chance to see these sculptures at a closer distance, so there is no glass cover," said He Shuyi, an exhibition assistant. "But there are still some bronzes and murals that are not displayed naked, because they will reflect light when they are covered in a glass cover. A little regret."
With the arrival of the summer vacation, the number of visitors to the National Expo has increased significantly, and the requirements for epidemic prevention are still everywhere.
Almost everyone in the exhibition hall held a sign that said "please wear a mask correctly".
They patrolled back and forth, and when they saw someone taking off their masks to drink water, they immediately stepped forward to remind them to wear masks.
The famous collection of the National Expo's drumming and rap figurines, whose cartoon image also wears a blue mask, has become an epidemic prevention propaganda ambassador.
In the past two years, several international exhibition projects negotiated by the National Expo have been terminated due to the epidemic.
The "Ancient Roman Civilization Exhibition" started, followed by the "Oriental Lucky Gold - China, Japan and Korea Ancient Bronze Ware Exhibition" held at the National Expo. It also used the method of video point-and-click to successfully land Japanese and Korean ancient bronze wares in China.
"Now foreign exhibitions are finally open, and they are gradually recovering." Pan Qing told China News Weekly.
"China News Weekly" Issue 30, 2022
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