Arts and Culture Blogging: Terra Cotta Warriors

If you’re in D.C. and have one hour and 12 bucks to spare, the Terra Cotta Warriors exhibit at the National Geographic is well worth checking out. I agree that a traveling exhibition with just 15 of the life-sized sculptures (and more than 100 objects) can never compare to an in-person view of some 1,000 battle-ready soldiers discovered so far in the Chinese city of  Xi’an. But the display layout, brief reading material, reproductions, and actual pieces are arrayed well and can be easily digested, even if there’s a crowd. For those who’ll never get to China, the exhibit provides at least a small sense of what was accomplished more than 2,000 years ago. (I was fascinated to learn that even 2,000 years ago, folk were contending with government bureaucracy!)

Listen to a radio interview with the museum director, watch a four-minute video, download teaching materials, and read other information on the website. The exhibit is in Washington through March 2010.

Subscribe to the National Geographic magazine.