The Heritage of Genghis Khan

24 August - 6 October 1996 in the Entire Gallery
As a result of collaboration between the Natural Museum of Los Angeles County and the Inner Mongolia Museum of China, the exhibition comprises artefacts from the collections of ten Chinese museums. Through examination of objects from cultures that flourished from 2000 BC through the fourteenth century AD, Dr Adam T. Kessler, curator of the exhibition, reveals the complicated and often ferocious interactions of the pastoral nomads of the steppelands to the North with their sedentary agrarian neighbours of central China. The narrative gives perspective to the legends of the Mongol leaders Genghis Khan and Kubilai Khan. But it also shows that the Mongols were but the last in a long series of empires to emerge from beyond the Great Wall and were truly the inheritors of a rich past.

A partnership between Te Papa Tongarewa, Museum of New Zealand and City Gallery Wellington.