We are delighted to announce the final stage of our online exhibition, Nara to Norwich, which explores the Silk Roads beyond their current limits of the Chinese and post-Roman worlds. Looking further east to Korea and Japan, and to the west to Britain and Scandinavia, the displays tell the story of how objects, ideas, people and beliefs travelled the numerous transcontinental and maritime routes at this time and the subsequent transformations of the landscapes and material culture.
All the exhibits are now online here. The final stories: Pilgrimage; Death and Burial; Silk; Glass; Horses; Ships and Navigation; Burial Bling; and Coda are in their final editing stage and will go online very shortly.
2024 has been an important year for the Nara to Norwich project, and the study of Silk Roads more generally. Following a research trip by the project team across Korea and Japan in April, the Sainsbury Institute brought an exhibition covering the themes of the Nara to Norwich research project to the centre of Norwich itself. Using high resolution maps as the backdrop, the exhibition covered a range of themes and objects from pilgrimage to pectoral crosses, and from silks to stupas as visitors were guided through the landscapes of the Silk Roads.
The exhibition was enhanced by a 12m high replica scroll of a painting of the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara from Hasedera in Japan. It was suspended from the ceiling of the atrium of the Forum and accompanied by the chanting monks of the Karyōbinga Shōmyō Kenkyūkai. They performed ritual sutras for the public of Norwich (find out more about the displays and associated events here). The displays are also travelling to London this autumn – further information on this will be announced soon.
The British Museum has also recently opened its major exhibition Silk Roads, on display until 23 February 2025. The project team were delighted to attend the opening of this impressive exhibition, which shared many themes with our own Nara to Norwich project. Upon entering, visitors are greeted by the Helgö Buddha—a small bronze figurine of the Buddha seated on a double lotus flower that embodies the exchange of items and ideas across vast areas that the Silk Roads traversed. Discovered in a Viking-era grave in Helgö, a small island in Sweden, the object was likely made in the Swat Valley, now northern Pakistan, some 3,000 miles away. Perhaps most intriguingly, the sculpture had loops of leather around its neck and left arm when excavated, used to denote sacred objects in Viking culture, which indicates it might well have had a votive function. This suggests that its Viking owners had some understanding of the sacred nature of the figure, despite there being no direct evidence for Buddhism having reached Sweden at this time.
The placement of this object at the start of the British Museum exhibition (it is found in the Coda of Nara to Norwich) highlights from the outset the great distances that ideas and objects — and the people, animals and transports that carried them — travelled along the Silk Roads. The displays then continue to explore the artefacts of the Silk Roads geographically as visitors are guided from the eastern to western edges of the routes, with a display on Nara being among the first encountered.
We would like to congratulate all of the curators of this exhibition: Dr Sue Brunning, Dr Elizabeth O’Connell, and Dr Yu-ping Luk, and the project curator, Zumrad Ilyasova, and we look forward to welcoming Dr Luk for our December Third Thursday Lecture.
As well as the British Museum exhibition, the British Library also has a related exhibition entitled A Silk Road Oasis: Life in Ancient Dunhuang. This explores the diversity of the peoples, languages and religions of Dunhuang, a trading town on the borders of Central Asia and China, through a small selection of the tens of thousands of manuscripts, paintings, printed documents and objects discovered there. Congratulations also to Mélodie Doumy and Kitty Liu, the curators.
Susan Whitfield, Professor of Silk Road Studies at the Institute and first director of the International Dunhuang Project (idp.bl.uk), has been the lead on the Nara to Norwich online exhibition and display, working closely with colleagues both in Norwich and worldwide. She is participating in a variety of events related to the various exhibitions mentioned including:
- Friday, 4th October, The British Library. 19:00 – 20:30: Dunhuang: The Story of the Caves – a panel with Mélodie Doumy and Yu-ping Luk on: tickets available here.
- Monday, 4th November, SOAS. Horses on the Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War and Play as part of the SOAS Short Course Silks, Spices, Merchants and Slaves: Trade and Transmission across land and maritime routes (500–1200).
- Thursday, 5th December, The British Museum: The Sir Percival David Annual Lecture on Chinese Art.
- Thursday 12th December, online: Chairing panel discussion with the British Museum curators.
Past events: recordings available