Good Fortune for These Splendors

Arriving in the wake of President Clinton’s visit to China, “Eternal China: Splendors From the First Dynasties” which opens Tuesday at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, appears to be a case of perfect timing. Not only has extensive press coverage of the presidential trip heightened interest in all things Chinese, but some of the most striking news photographs of the journey featured Clinton and his daughter, Chelsea, walking in an excavated tomb of life-size terra cotta warriors--several examples of which are star attractions in this touring exhibition of ancient Chinese art.

The buried army was created during the Qin dynasty (221-206 BC) and discovered in 1974 on farmlands outside Xian, the ancient capital of China located about 450 miles southwest of Beijing. It is one of the most astounding archeological finds in the entire course of human history, with more than 7,000 sculptures, including 600 horses, excavated to date. A dozen of those pieces--a general, various lower-ranking officers, charioteers, archers, a stableman and a horse--currently occupy a room of their own at the Santa Barbara museum, where they form the dramatic climax of the 115-piece show.

Major exhibitions of the artistic heritage of ancient civilizations are enormously complicated ventures that are planned years in advance, so the scheduling of “Eternal China” is fortuitous, not opportunistic. But officials at the Santa Barbara museum are delighted with the coincidental confluence of events.

“The timing was absolutely terrific,” said Robert H. Frankel, director of the museum. “The first photographs of the president down in the pit with the warriors appeared in newspapers the day the sculptures arrived here. The world didn’t know that, of course, but it was wonderful for the staff.”

For the public, the photographs create a geographical and historic context for the sculpture at the museum, he said. “People are aware of the warriors, but Xian is not necessarily a name with which most people are familiar.”

And even those who have visited the archeological dig in central China haven’t confronted the figures face-to-face. Tourists stand on the upper ground level surrounding the pit and look down on the ranks of excavated warriors, so seeing a few of the figures in a pristine gallery offers a certain advantage, Frankel said.

“What’s wonderful about the exhibition is that people will have a chance to be on the same level with the figures, as the president was. They have such an extraordinary presence and they convey such a sense of history that their effect on people is very strong. Another interesting thing is that all the figures’ heads are different, so one gets the sense of them being individual portraits.”

The Santa Barbara show is only the latest--and far from the largest--Chinese exhibition to come to the United States during the last few years as China has become increasingly open to cultural exchange programs. “China: 5,000 Years,” a sweeping survey composed of more than 500 works of art, ended a four-month run in early June at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and opened this weekend at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain, where it will be on view through October.

“Splendors of Imperial China: Treasures From the National Palace Museum, Taipei”--conceived as the greatest show of Chinese art ever to come to the West, but afflicted by political tension and ultimately reduced in scope--toured the country in 1996, making appearances at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

Figures from the Qin tomb in Xian have been exhibited around the United States as well. Terra cotta warriors were among the primary attractions in “Imperial Tombs of China,” a 250-piece blockbuster surveying 25 centuries of Chinese history and culture, at the Portland Art Museum in 1996. In Los Angeles, the County Museum of Art displayed three of the Xian figures in 1987, in “The Quest for Eternity: Chinese Ceramic Sculpture From the People’s Republic of China.”

But if the Santa Barbara show might appear to be a mere rerun, Frankel said that is not the case. “Clearly other exhibitions have had material from Xian, but this is a very different kind of show.” Neither a broad historical survey nor a grouping of China’s greatest hits of the type generally titled “treasures,” the show is “very focused on sculpture of the first two dynasties, the Qin and the Han,” he said. “It concentrates solely on that, and how the sculpture reveals the life--and death--of people in those two dynasties. This is really the beginning of the whole development of Chinese art. So much was codified during the Qin dynasty.”

Although many American museum visitors have seen a few of the life-size terra cotta figures, most of the objects in the show are making an international debut. “About 95% of the material has never been outside of China,” Frankel said. “Much of it was relatively recently discovered, and it’s all from the collections of provincial museums in Xian.”

Encompassing works in stone, earthenware, gilded bronze and jade, the exhibition includes carved architectural panels, weapons, jewelry and a stylized jade mask made to hold a ring handle. The objects on display also range widely in size, from a life-size, 2 1/2-ton granite tiger to a tiny (1 1/2-by-1 1/8-inch) jade seal used to execute orders by a Chinese empress.

“The seal may look insignificant compared to the large sculpture, but it’s a national treasure,” said Susan Tai, the museum’s curator of Asian art. An exceedingly rare item, the seal was probably used by Empress Lu, who ruled after the death of her husband Emperor Gaozu and son Liu Ying, and died in 180 BC.

Most of the objects were created to accompany important people in the afterlife and have been excavated from imperial tombs, Tai said. An earthenware model of buildings erected around two courtyards, for example, may replicate the home of the deceased, or it may be a grander interpretation representing his domestic aspirations, she said. Little is known about many of the objects, particularly those that have been unearthed quite recently, but Chinese historians and archeologists are gradually building a body of knowledge. Because of its shape, a jade carving of a pig is thought to be a burial pillow, Tai said, citing one example.

Among the works of art that visitors are likely to find most enchanting are animal sculptures. “We have a wonderful group of them,” Frankel said, pointing out an elegant gilded horse and several earthenware pieces, including a stately camel, a whimsical unicorn and a pair of monkeys. The relatively playful animals were created during the Han dynasty, in a period of prosperity, in contrast to the more somber art of the earlier Qin dynasty, Tai noted.

Visitors will encounter the relatively lighthearted pieces early on, however, because the show is installed in reverse chronological order. Walking backward through time is the most effective way to draw people into the exhibition and to display this particular selection of objects, Tai said. With the exception of a few pre-Qin objects, the gallery of figures from the Xian army represents the earliest period in the show, but it is the grand finale. Walking past a photomural of the archeological dig, visitors will suddenly encounter a striking, formal arrangement of figures lined up behind the general.

The exhibition was organized by the Dayton Art Institute, which joined forces with the Santa Barbara museum while plans were still in the works. “Two years ago at the Assn. of Art Museum Directors meeting in New Orleans, I shared a cab from the airport to the city with Alex Nyerges, director of the Dayton Art Institute,” Frankel said. “We were talking about projects we were working on, and he said they were in early stages of organizing an exhibition of material from Xian. I said we would really be interested in working with them. It developed from there, and now, two years later, it’s here.”

Li Jian, curator of Asian art at Dayton, selected the objects. Tai oversaw the installation in Santa Barbara, wrote text for wall labels and helped produce an Acoustiguide audio tour to be included in the price of admission. She also has worked with three Chinese curators who accompanied the artworks to Dayton and Santa Barbara.

Budgeted at about $750,000 and underwritten by Santa Barbara museum patrons Paul and Leslie Ridley-Tree, “Eternal China” is “certainly the most ambitious exhibition that we have done,” Frankel said. “It is not only a wonderful show, but it takes the museum to a different level. The museum’s new wing has opened, we have been able to reconsider the way our collections work, and now--although certainly not to the exclusion of other exhibitions we do--we are able to do something of this magnitude. A few years ago we would not have tried this.”

Specially ticketed both at the museum and through Ticketmaster, the exhibition is expected to broaden the museum’s audience at least for the moment. But Frankel hopes first-time visitors will return for exhibitions that are “smaller in magnitude but no less important.” He also hopes to build appreciation of the museum’s permanent collection. “Visitors will enter the exhibition from Ludington Court, where they will see our Greek and Roman antiquities, contemporary to Qin and Han material,” he said. “As people come in and pick up their audio guides, the first thing they will see is our antiquities.”

Meanwhile, the museum’s marketing and education forces are gearing up for crowds. Among many other programs related to “Eternal China,” several local restaurants are offering fortune cookies containing discounts at the museum shop and free tickets to the show.

“But the nice thing about this particular exhibition is that, although it includes spectacular material, it hasn’t given us a choice of either the scholarly or the spectacular,” Frankel said. “It is an exhibition that will appeal both to scholars and the public, at many different levels.”

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“Eternal China: Splendors From the First Dynasties,” Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1130 State St., Santa Barbara. Opens Tuesday. Regular schedule: Tuesdays to Sundays, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; Fridays, 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Ends Oct. 18. Tickets, available at the museum or Ticketmaster: adults, $10; seniors, $8; ages 6-17, $6; under 6, free. (805) 963-4364.