A masterpiece of Tang dynasty art has been understood primarily as relief sculpture. New research argues that its original form—and meaning—was something different.
What can digital reconstruction offer beyond visually recreating a lost historical state, especially when the cultural heritage in question has been dispersed or removed from the original context?
Long known as the Six Horses of Zhaoling, the mausoleum of Emperor Taizong (598–649), they were carved as relief on large stone panels, each roughly life-sized in presence and mounted originally on stone pedestals. Why are they there and what do they stand for?
Conversation between groundbreaking artist Lu Yang and Dr. Ellen Larson, CAEA Associate Director, at the Smart Museum of Art.
A four-session K–12 workshop where students explore East Asian cultural heritage through virtual reality, oracle bone script, 3D printing, and a museum visit.
Large sections of the elaborate stone relief carvings from the Binyang Central Cave were destroyed or sold to museums in the early part of the 20th Century. This interactive feature explores each of these reliefs and what is known about their modern whereabouts.
The Zhihua Temple is a Ming dynasty era Buddhist temple located in Beijing. The project resulted in digitally restored models of two of the main temple halls along with their original carved ceilings, which have resided in the Nelson Atkins Museum in Kansas City and the Philadelphia Museum of Art since the early 20th Century.
The Longmen Grottoes is a UNESCO World Heritage site consisting of more than 2000 caves and 100,000 Buddhist statues, with most construction occurring between the 6th and 10th centuries C.E. Our project has digitally restored much of the Binyang Central Cave—one of the largest and oldest caves at the site, and originally including pieces now in collections at the Metropolitan Museum, the Tokyo National Museum and the Osaka City Museum.
The Six Horses of Zhaoling are six large stone relief sculptures created for the mountaintop mausoleum of the second emperor of the Tang Dynasty, Emperor Taizong of Tang (598-649). The sculptures sustained significant damage over the years, and have been moved from their original location to museums in China and the US. This project aims to produce a complete digital reconstruction of the six stone horses and the upper three terraces of the emperor's mausoleum, known as Zhaoling.