Enhance your visit to the Bowers Museum's Terra Cotta Warriors: Guardians of China's First Emperor exhibition by attending a lecture, film, or special program at the museum. These events provide added insight or experience to make your trip to the Bowers one to remember.
Upcoming Programs and Events:
Chinese Cultural Family Festival
Farewell to the Warriors
Sunday, 12:00pm - 4PM, October 5
Bring family and friends for a fun-filled day of Chinese music and art! A fun-filled afternoon of Chinese music, art, and activities for the entire family, join us for face-painting, art projects, artisan demonstrations, food sampling and a Chinese Lion Dance. Free admission to Terra Cotta Warriors: Guardians of China's First Emperor.**
To The Spirits Above and the People Below: The First Emperor's Mountain Inscriptions
Sunday, 1:30pm, October 5
Dr. Martin Kern, Princeton, discusses the inscribed stone steles set on mountain peaks by the First Emperor who embarked on a series of ritual processions that led him to these peaks in his newly subjugated lands. Announcing the imperial unification to both the cosmic spirits and the people of the former eastern states, the steles are couched in a classical idiom that was at once political and religious, ritually completing the military conquest.*
Archaeological Perspectives on the Qin Unification of China
Sunday, 1:30pm, October 12
Dr. Lothar Von Falkenhausen, UCLA, introduces recent archaeological findings that have prompted a reinterpretation of the First Emperor's historical contribution. It is often claimed that when the First Emperor unified large parts of continental East Asia for the first time under a centralized bureaucratic regime, he imposed a series of comprehensive innovations, e.g., a unified script, currency, weights-and-measurements system, and legal code. Recent archaeological discoveries have show, however, that the Qin unification merely introduced to the rest of China the administrative institutions that had previously been established in the Qin kingdom, and which in turn were no more than a variation of the institutions that existed simultaneously in neighboring states. The First Emperor's mausoleum with its famous terra cotta figures should likewise be seen as a gigantically magnified manifestation of a tomb type that had been evolving since the middle of the first millennium BC. It is now obvious that the unification of China was not achieved during a single emperor's reign, but a drawn-out process that extended over centuries.*
*This program is graciously sponsored in conjunction with the exhibition, Terra Cotta Warriors: Guardians of China's First Emperor, in memory of Harry Rooney.
**This program is graciously sponsored by Target and The Nicholas Endowment