Thursday, September 27
1:00 p.m.
Museum Boardroom

The fabled Silk Road held vast treasures lying buried under the loess soil of the deserts  of China and central Eurasia until intrepid travelers from many lands, risking unheard of dangers, uncovered wonders.  During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, numerous international expeditions of archaeologists, art historians and adventurers found hidden cities, temples and caves holding manuscripts, sculptures, utensils of everyday life and wall paintings which told, to the delight of historians, of life in a time hundreds of years earlier.  The competition between these groups which included British, Germans, French, Japanese and Russians was fierce. Today museums around the world hold the treasures they discovered.

Helen Anderson, independent scholar, intrepid traveler and former chairman of The San Diego Museum of Art’s Asian Arts Council will take us along the paths traveled by these men, outlining the treasures they found.

Helen Anderson was born in Virginia and educated there at Longwood College. She subsequently pursued her studies of Asian art over a period of 40 years while living In Taiwan, Singapore, Bangkok, Iran and Hong Kong.  She has lectured in the National Palace Museum in Taipei, the National Museum of Bangkok, the Phoenix Art Museum, the San Diego Museum of Art and the Chinese University of Hong Kong Museum of Art.  She was given visiting scholar privileges at the National Palace Museum in Taipei to study the ceramic collection there. She has also personally visited and studied the museum collections in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.

Please Note: The program originally scheduled “Textiles for the Head: Utility, Identity, Authority (part 2)” was canceled due to scheduling conflict.

Free to AAC members | $10 Museum members | $12 nonmembers | $8 students

Sponsored by the Asian Arts Council