Mark your calendars for June 17, 2000 when The Golden Age of Chinese Archeology – the most extensive exhibition of Chinese art to be shown in the West in the last 50 years — opens at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. 

The Golden Age of Chinese Archeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China  offers visitors a rare glimpse of 248 extraordinary artifacts unearthed in China during the last 20 years. More than 30 museums in China have contributed national treasures to the show, which spans 6000 years of Chinese history and sheds light on the country’s complex and little-understood early history. 

Included in the exhibition are an array of intricately carved jades, immense bronze sculptures and ornate silver and gold vessels, as well as several of the famous life size terra cotta warriors from Xian. Also featured in this landmark exhibition is an enormous set of 26 bronze bells, two jade burial suits, an ivory vessel with turquoise inlay and a mysterious 8-foot tall bronze figure, among others.

Archeological discoveries in China during the past 30 years have been among the world’s richest and most abundant. Nearly all the works were discovered in tombs or burial chambers of important personages and most are belied to have served as funerary objects. 

Visitors will travel through Neolithic China (5000-2001 BCE), where they will view an array of painted pottery, rare jadework and terra cotta figurines to Bronze Age China (2000-771 BCE),  where a bronze human head with gold leaf mask is among the artifacts on display, along with the largest continuous bell chime known from this era. 

Dating from the Eastern Zhou period (770-221 BCE) is an intricately painted lacquer deer with a rotating head. The Qin Dynasty (221-207 BCE) is represented by life-size terra cotta warriors. A burial shroud made with more than 200 individual jade squares, each sown with strands of gold wire, is the treasure of the Western Han Dynasty (206 BCE-24 CE). On display from the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE) is a small, delicately sculpted broze dragon.

The exhibition will run through September 11, 2000. Tickets are available online at www.asianart.org or by calling 800-965-4827.While this collection is valued in the multimillions of dollars – well out of the range of the typical private collector – high quality reproductions of many of the pieces in the show will be on display and for sale at Man-U Imports throughout the summer.