Warriors on their way to Richmond

From left: Li Jian, curator of Chinese art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Art; Wu Xi, minister of the Chinese embassy in Washington; Alex Nyerges, director of VMFA; Mark Keam, Virginia House of Delegates, and Pascal Fernandez of Altria gather at the reception of VMFA’s latest exhibition Terracotta Army Legacy of the First Emperor of China on Monday at the embassy. YUAN YUAN / FOR CHINA DAILY

More than 130 pieces of Chinese art from the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC) will travel across the Pacific Ocean and visit the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) in Richmond from Nov 18 to March 11, 2018.

The exhibition, Terracotta Army: Legacy of the First Emperor of China, will showcase works of art drawn from the collections of 14 museums and archaeological institutes across Shaanxi province. It will tell stories of how the Qin state developed into an empire under Ying Zheng (259-210 BC), who unified China and declared himself Qin Shihuang.

"These exquisite pieces from the Qin dynasty will bring us back to more than 2,000 years ago - an extraordinary chapter in Chinese history, when the first dynasty of imperial China was established, and China began to develop into a unified and multiethnic nation," said Wu Xi, minister of the Chinese embassy in Washington.

"The Qin Dynasty ended hostilities and wars that lasted for more than 500 years in China and laid the groundwork for the prosperity and peace of the Han dynasty. This chapter in history always reminds Chinese people of the price we paid for unification and how blessed we are to enjoy peace, stability and prosperity," Wu said.

The exhibition includes more than 40 objects never shown before in the US.

"It's going to be fantastic. It's the greatest archeological treasure ever," said VMFA director Alex Nyerges, who has been to Xi'an 30 times.

"The Terracotta Army is one of the most important archaeological discoveries of the 20th century. In our 80-year history, the Terracotta Army will be the first exhibition organized by VMFA that is devoted to the art and archaeology of ancient China," Nyerges said.

"From the featured objects, our audience will learn about the First Emperor's political and cultural innovation and legacy, as well as gain a better understanding about ancient Chinese cultural history as part of world civilization," Nyerges said.

"Chinese artists and Chinese culture have been making great art for more than 5,000 years. Americans know so little about the continuum of Chinese art history. How unbroken it is and how magnificent it is. So this is a way for us to show Virginia and America how magnificent the Chinese creative world has been, for millennia," Nyerges said.

From October 2014 to January 2015, the VMFA staged an exhibition titled Forbidden City: Imperial Treasures from the Palace Museum, which drew from the collection of the Palace Museum in Beijing, with objects from the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties.

Both exhibitions were curated by Li Jian, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter, curator of East Asian art at VMFA.

leshuodong@chinadailyusa.com