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Terracotta soldiers occupy Montreal museum

The Warrior Emperor’s army has occupied Montreal’s Museum of Fine Arts.Stone-faced statues of soldiers stand erect in the stunning exhibit, which traces pivotal moments in Chinese history and springs from one of the greatest archeological finds of the 20th century.
B02-Travel-Terracotta
Emperor Qin Shihuangm

MONTREAL — The Warrior Emperor’s army has occupied Montreal’s Museum of Fine Arts.

Stone-faced statues of soldiers stand erect in the stunning exhibit, which traces pivotal moments in Chinese history and springs from one of the greatest archeological finds of the 20th century.

Bronze swords, ceremonial helmets and armour made from limestone panels line display cases. Implements and statues of animals and birds give a glimpse into days long past.

There are even — oddly enough — stone sex toys that were placed in the emperor’s tomb for the afterlife.

It’s the last stop for The Warrior Emperor and China’s Terracotta Army exhibit, originally set to visit four Canadian cities but in the end stopping in just two — Toronto and Montreal.

The Toronto show ended Jan. 2 and the Montreal show opened Feb. 11 and will run until June 26.

The exhibit at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum was hailed as the venue’s most popular exhibit in a decade and Montreal organizers are optimistic Canadians will line up to get a last look before it returns to China.

“You don’t know when you’re going to see them again, at least in Canada,” said Laura Vigo, the Montreal museum’s curator of Asian art.

Chinese authorities nixed plans to take the show to Calgary’s Glenbow Museum and the Royal BC Museum in Victoria, citing new regulations that only allow the artifacts to be outside China for a year at a time.

The Chinese are reportedly worried prolonged travel might further deteriorate the artifacts, which date back 2,200 years.

Vigo acknowledged the Chinese are understandably strict about how the statues are manipulated. She pointed to a horse which took about a half-day to place and could only be moved once when it was on its display stand.

“They are delicate but most of these pieces are very hard, very, very heavy as well,” she said.

“Most of these pieces actually were found broken in the pit so there was already a long process of re-assemblage, of remounting these pieces after they were found.”

Many of the large pieces are “quite strong” and “I wouldn’t want one to fall on me,” she added with a laugh.

The more than 240 artifacts in the show were among those uncovered in careful archeological probing since the 1970s, when workers digging a well in Xi’an in China’s Shaanxi province uncovered the first emperor’s massive funeral complex.

It was eventually found that Emperor Qin Shihuangm, who united warring Chinese states into one empire and began construction of China’s Great Wall, had about 8,000 life-size terracotta soldiers crafted to guard his tomb, along with statues of animals, bureaucrats and performers.

Chen Shen, senior curator of East Asian Art at the Royal Ontario Museum, said there’s a straightforward comparison to be made between the Chinese emperor’s tomb and the pyramids built to honour Egyptian pharaohs.

“The Egyptian pharaohs built the pyramids above ground,” said Shen, who worked with Montreal organizers and was on hand for the show’s opening. “The first emperor did it another way around. He did the pyramids being sunk down into the pit. The whole concept of the afterlife for these great emperors, great pharaohs are the same. They’re looking for eternity.”

Archeologists continue to explore the huge protected site and pull out historical treasures.

Vigo explained that about one million artisans and slaves crafted the detailed figures. Heads, torsos, and various other parts were made assembly-line style in moulds.

Nathalie Bondil, chief curator of the Montreal museum, said the exhibit isn’t just a wonderful show but a great opportunity.

“This exhibition is the perfect opportunity not only to open the museum to the world but also to tell you an absolutely fabulous story of the ascension of the Qin dynasty and the heritage of that dynasty,” she said.

“The hands were made in moulds and they had a detachable thumb so basically you could move the wrist about to make sure they had a different posture and could hold different objects,” she said.

After being moulded, heads got another layer of clay and then detail was worked in.

“The diversity is done by altering the position, for instance, the orientation of the head or the way it has been painted. They managed, in a very short period, to build up an immense army of 8,000.”

The artifacts were painted in lacquer, which didn’t fare well under the earth.

“Every time these soldiers have been lifted out of the earth, the traces of pigmentation that they had sort of faded away and disintegrated,” Vigo said.

“You can understand that 2,000 years of being under the soil doesn’t make for good preservation either. Only recently, in the 1990s, they managed to find a way to preserve parts of the pigment.”

Vigo noted that one of the preserved pieces would be on display.

“We are very lucky to have one of the archers in our exhibition that still has traces of the pigment on the armour and on the face and little red laces on the head.

“You just have to imagine how colourful this army must have been when it was created.”

She lamented that few likely saw it in all its splendour because it was hidden away in wooden tunnels.

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If you go . . .

Dates: Feb. 11 to June 26, 2011

Address: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Jean-Noel Desmarais Pavilion, 1380 Sherbrooke Street West.

Admission: Children up to age 12 get in free, age 13-25 pay $12 while people 26 to 64 pay $20. It’s $16 for people 65 and older. Group rates are also available. Admission is half price on Wednesday nights, from 5 to 8.30 p.m., for adults.

Hours: Tuesday: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Wednesday, Thursday, Friday: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Internet site: www.mbam.qc.ca/en/index.html