Glenbow Museum cancels Chinese Terracotta Army exhibit

CALGARY – The Glenbow Museum’s planned 2011 exhibition of Chinese Terracotta Army figures is marching back to China.

That was the stunning news Thursday, when the museum announced the cancellation of the four-month exhibition, which was to open July 30, 2011, and run through November.

The cancellation is the result of a Chinese law that limits the amount of time the artifacts can remain outside of China to one year.

Discovered in 1974 by archeologists, the Terracotta Army is thousands of life-size terra cotta sculptures of warriors dating to the Qin dynasty 2,200 years ago. The site, in China’s northern Shaanxi province, is considered one of the most important archeological discoveries in the world, and has become a major tourist attraction.

The Glenbow exhibit was to include 250 artifacts from the site, including 16 life-size terracotta sculptures of soldiers and two of horses. It was to be the largest collection of such sculptures to be seen in North America.

The exhibit opened at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto in June, and will have a run at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts beginning in February before returning to China.

"It’s unfortunate," said Glenbow’s president and CEO Kirstin Evenden. "Really disappointing."

The show was also cancelled in Victoria, where it was to run at the Royal B.C. Museum from Dec. 23, 2011, to April 22, 2012.

The reversal came as a result of concern by Chinese authorities that the longer the objects are on tour, the more they deteriorate.

"The longer something like that is in transit, moved around and is under different lighting and environmental standards, all takes life off the objects’ life," Evenden said.

The exhibition deal was made with provincial authorities, but national officials have the final say. The one-year rule has not been enforced by Beijing until now.

Glenbow officials worked the diplomatic hotline with China, trying to get them to reverse their decision, to no avail.

"We worked at the highest diplomatic and political levels to see if we could change the decision," Evenden said. "Unfortunately, after a period of back and forth with a number of different diplomatic entities, the decision has clearly come down as irrevocable and so we have to — while disappointed in the decision — we have to respect the decision and move on."

The Glenbow anticipated the exhibit would draw around 150,000 visitors.

While the cancellation of the Terracotta Army exhibit has left Glenbow officials scrambling to fill exhibition space next summer, they have already announced a new show for the fall.

Watch Me Move: The Story of Animation, from the Barbican Art Gallery in London, will open in October at the Glenbow.

The show is a major exploration of animation as an art form, exploring everything from the earliest days of the form, in the early 1900s, to Disney, to TV shows such as The Simpsons, Pixar films such as Toy Story and all the way up to Avatar.

"(It’s a) totally different project," said Evenden, "but I think Calgarians and Albertans have told us they’re really interested in exhibitions of consequence like this one. We’ve been working hard to make sure those things come to town.

"The terracotta didn’t work for us, but there’s all kinds of others in the hopper."

shunt@calgaryherald.com