Journal articles on the topic 'Getty Conservation Institute'

The Getty Research Institute (GRI) is one of four programs of the J. Paul Getty Trust, an international cultural and philanthropic institution devoted to the visual arts, all of which reside at the Getty Center situated high on a beautiful hilltop in Brentwood, California. (The other programs of the Getty Trust are the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Conservation Institute, and the Getty Grant Program.) From the beginning it was understood that the GRI would develop a research program in the discipline of art history and more generally the humanities, and that a library would support its work. Since its founding the GRI has, in fact, developed a major library as one of its programs alongside those for scholars, publications, exhibitions and a multitude of lectures, workshops and symposia for scholars, students and the general public. What is now known as the Research Library at the GRI has grown to be a significant resource and this article focuses on its history, the building that houses it, its collections and databases, and access to them all.

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> The J. Paul Getty Trust is a cultural and philanthropic institution dedicated to the presentation, conservation, and interpretation of the world’s artistic legacy.</p><p>Through the collective and individual work of its constituent programs – the Getty Conservation Institute, the Getty Foundation, the J Paul Getty Museum, and the Getty Research Institute – the Getty pursues its mission in Los Angeles and throughout the world, serving both the general interested public and a wide range of professional communities in order to promote a vital civil society through an understanding of the visual arts.</p><p>The Getty Research Institute is dedicated to furthering knowledge and advancing understanding of the visual arts and their various histories through its expertise, active collecting program, public programs, institutional collaborations, exhibitions, publications, digital services, and residential scholars programs. Its Research Library and Special Collections of rare materials and digital resources serve an international community of scholars and the interested public.</p><p>The Institute's activities and scholarly resources guide and sustain each other and together provide a unique environment for research, critical inquiry, and scholarly exchange.</p><p>The Getty Vocabularies have been produced and maintained for decades by the Getty Vocabulary Program, which is part of the Getty Research Institute (GRI).</p><p>They are compliant with ISO and NICO standards for multilingual thesaurus construction and contain terminology and other information about people, places, objects, and art-historical and conservation concepts.</p><p>They are compiled resources and grow through contributions from various Getty projects and from many external institutions.</p><p>Although there are now five vocabularies, this talk will concentrate on the three that have been released as Linked Open Data.</p><p>They are the Art &amp;amp; Architecture Thesaurus (AAT)®, the Union List of Artist Names (ULAN)&amp;reg;, and the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN)&amp;reg;. These three vocabularies were the first to be released because they are used universally in the cultural heritage and library communities and represent best practice.</p><p>The presentation will show examples of how AAT, TGN and ULAN are used and to highlight reasons why they have become such valuable resources. It will provide an overview of some of the major challenges and lessons learned since the vocabularies were made available as LOD. Topics will range from reconciling external resources with the Getty vocabularies to strategies for cultural heritage organizations to contribute new concepts and terminology and the need to easily and quickly provide contributors with the information they need to insert the link into their collection management systems.</p><p>The goal is not only to work with the community to help everyone make the best use of the LOD datasets, but to make sure the datasets themselves continue to grow through contributions.</p>

Reseña del libro: Environmental Management for Collections. Alternative Preservation Strategies for Hot and Humid Climates. Autores: Shin Maekawa, Vincent L. Beltran, Michael C. Henry. Publicado por: The Getty Conservation Institute. Los Ángeles, 2015. 419 páginas, 220 x 280 mm ISBN: 987-1-60606-434-4 (http://www.getty.edu/publications)

The Pisco earthquake of August 15, 2007 resulted in 519 deaths and 1366 injured, with a total of 650,000 people affected and 80,000 dwellings damaged. Preliminary reports indicated that significant earthen sites were damaged. A few months after the earthquake a rapid assessment to better understand the failure of the affected sites was performed by a multidisciplinary team convened by the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) in response to a request from the Instituto Nacional de Cultura del Perú (INC). This paper presents the highlights of that evaluation and its implications for the future design and retrofit of earthen buildings.

Historical Perspectives in the Conservation of Works of Art on Paper provides a comprehensive collection of ninety-six readings—spanning six centuries—related to the conservation of paper-based art. Published by the Getty Conservation Institute, one of this work’s greatest strengths is its masterful organization of texts, which builds and climaxes in a finale that offers a multifaceted yet distinct and straightforward representation of the field of conservation.The readings are gathered into eight sections based on the development of the technology behind and the thinking that underpins the field. “The Powers of Paper” illustrates various ideas about the role of paper. Practical, . . .

There is a desperate and urgent need to conserve works of art and documentary materials in Southeast Asia, where the rigours of the climate and the effects of war and political unrest have ravaged the cultural heritage. An initiative launched by Cornell University in Cambodia, with the intention of preserving documentary materials and training Cambodian librarians in conservation techniques, may result in the development of a badly-needed regional centre which would complement the National Archives of the Philippines, and the Regional Conservation Centres established by IFLA on the Pacific rim, in Australia and Japan. Information and expertise are available from UNESCO, ICOMOS, ICCROM, ICOM, the Getty Conservation Institute, IIC, IADA, IPC, IFLA, ICA, and other international and US organisations.

In 2013 the Salk Institute for Biological Studies partnered with the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) to commence development of a conservation program for the long-term care of the teak window walls. Phase 1 of the program included preliminary historic research and an assessment of significance, surveys and investigative inspection openings, wood and fungus identification, and analyses of past surface treatments. Guidelines were then developed based on three treatment approaches, ranging from in situ cleaning and treatment, to selective repairs, and finally in-kind replacement of teak wood. In Phase 2 of the work, the GCI and Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc. (WJE) developed a trial mock-up program to assess the protocols of the three treatments. This article will review the overarching goal of the treatment approaches, integrating conservation and repair needs with select modifications to the window detailing to improve long-term performance, including surface treatments to protect the teak wood and retard fungal growth and weathering over time.

Abstract The World Heritage site of the Mogao Grottoes near Dunhuang is China's preeminent ancient Buddhist site on the Silk Road. It flourished between the fourth and the fourteenth centuries and comprises some 492 cave temples with wall paintings and sculpture. The Getty Conservation Institute has been working with the Dunhuang Academy since 1989 on site conservation and management using guidelines, the Principles for the Conservation of Heritage Sites in China, that were developed at the national level. Elements of the successful twenty-year collaboration are discussed in the context of the conservation and management challenges faced at the site and the projects developed to address them, including conservation of the wall paintings in Cave 85, a late Tang dynasty cave with extensive deterioration induced by salts derived from the underlying rock; and visitors to the site, who have increased rapidly since the site was opened in 1979.

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> A cornerstone of the management and conservation of archaeological sites is recording their physical characteristics. Documenting and describing the site is an essential step that allows for delineating the components of the site and for collecting and synthesizing information and documentation (Demas, 2012). The information produced by such work assists in the decision-making process for custodians, site managers, public officials, conservators, and other related experts. Rigorous documentation may also serve a broader purpose: over time, it becomes the primary archival and monitoring record. Both scholars and the public use this information and interpret the site, and they can serve as a posterity record in the event of catastrophic or gradual loss of the heritage asset. In May 2018 the Getty Conservation Institute and the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus collaborated with the Carleton Immersive Media Studio in undertaking the documentation of Nea Paphos, a World Heritage site with very important mosaic pavements in the eastern Mediterranean. This contribution outlines the critical components of the documentation project: field study, field measurements, data processing, validation, GIS, and integration of external data. The paper summarizes the digital workflows and procedures used to produce the deliverables, as well as the equipment and technology employed.</p>

ABSTRACTThe conservation of the architectural surfaces in the tablinum of the House of the Bicentenary at the ancient Roman site of Herculaneum is a collaborative project of the Getty Conservation Institute, the Herculaneum Conservation Project and the Soprintendenza Pompeii. The tablinum was selected as a case study given the significance, beauty, and severe deterioration of its decorated surfaces. A multi-disciplinary team with a wide range of expertise, comprised of conservators, chemists, geo-physicists, engineers, and conservation scientists, worked in partnership across a number of institutions with the objective to study the wall paintings in the tablinum. Scientists and conservators worked together to test the feasibility of portable techniques and in situ investigations to better understand Roman painting technology; identify previous restoration materials; determine the presence of alteration products; and characterize deterioration mechanisms commonly found on architectural surfaces at archaeological sites of the Vesuvian Region. The collection and interpretation of the instrumental data has been critical to the design and implementation of appropriate passive and remedial interventions to stabilize the architectural surfaces and mitigate deterioration. The paper will present the results of the investigations using portable instrumentation along with a discussion of the capabilities and limitations of each technique and the practical implications of their use for architectural surfaces on archaeological sites.

In 1932, the Mexican artist David Alfaro Siqueiros was commissioned to paint an idealized tropical scene on a second-story exterior wall on Olvera Street, in the heart of downtown Los Angeles. Siqueiros instead created América Tropical, a monumental mural depicting an overgrown jungle with a crucified Indian peasant surmounted by an American eagle, at which revolutionary soldiers aim their rifles. This imagery was immediately controversial; within the decade the entire mural was whitewashed. For the next twenty years, it remained under layers of white paint, neglected and all but forgotten. In 1988, the Getty Conservation Institute began a collaboration with the City of Los Angeles to conserve América Tropical. This led to a study of the environment around the mural and the design of a protective shelter and viewing platform for the public. Eighty years after its creation, América Tropical was re-unveiled to the public. Today, visitors to El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument can learn more about the history, controversy, and modern techniques in mural conservation at the America Tropical Interpretive Center, located on historic Olvera Street.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present current challenges in concrete conservation and how the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) is responding to these challenges. The Concrete Conservation Project initiated by the GCI is aimed at advancing the practice of conserving historic concrete structures through the creation and dissemination of information. Design/methodology/approach The scope of the project was defined through discussions in experts meetings, development of annotated bibliography and literature review. The project proposes to face the identified issues with the dissemination of information on case studies, development of guidance documents, training opportunities and scientific research. Findings Despite the existing well-established repair industry for concrete structures generally, current data on concrete repair do not meet the needs of conservation professionals, there is little information on the efficacy and durability of existing repair solutions, shortage of training opportunities, and there is a lack of technical guidelines focused on concrete conservation. Originality/value Conserving concrete is a nascent area of preservation practice facing multiple challenges. Reinforced concrete is the most commonly used building material of the twentieth century. As the heritage of the twentieth century is increasingly recognized as worthy of conservation, conserving concrete has become a priority. The history of this material reveals a story of innovation, radical advancement in material and structural engineering, and correspondingly daring responses by architects, together creating a huge array of reinforced concrete structures from the ordinary to the extraordinary.

Earthquakes are recurring natural phenomena that cause cumulative damage to earth constructions that can lead to their collapse. The discovery of earthen architectural heritage in Peru, has led to the re-exposure of adobe buildings, increasing their vulnerability to seismic activity. How can we prevent protect them from further damage their loss and? Due to their gradual and progressive destruction, earth constructions located in seismic areas constitute a critical and unique case. The structural response of stone masonry joined with mud mortar depends on the weakest of their construction materials: earth. This paper presents the criteria for structural conservation of earthen architectural heritage and tools for seismic-resistant reinforcement developed by field experts during the last 25 years. The concepts of reinforced earth and liquid mud injection, developed by the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (PUCP) with support from the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI), are also included in this work. The article also analyzes recent cases of the re-intervention of earth monuments initially restored during the last century and re-destroyed by more recent earthquakes; offers solutions to this situation, ranging from the safest and friendliest to the most aggressive ones. Finally, I concludes expressing the urgent need to reassess the conservation criteria accepted by the International Charters ratified by ICOMOS and UNESCO regarding earthen architectural heritage located in seismic areas.

As it is broadly understood, recording serves as a basis for the diagnosis, treatment and preservation of historic places and contributes to record our built cultural heritage for posterity. This work is not a stand-alone practice but a part of the overall conservation process of cultural heritage at imminent risk of irreversible damage. Recording of heritage places should be directly related to the needs, skills and the technology that are available to the end users that are responsible for the management and care of these sites. They should be selected in a way that the future managers of these sites can also access and use the data collected. This paper explains an innovative heritage recording approach applied by the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) and Carleton Immersive Media Studio (CIMS) in the documentation of historic decorated surfaces at the Caïd Residence, located at <i>Tighermt (Kasbah)</i> <i>Taourirt</i> in Ouarzazate, Morocco; as part of a collaborative project between the GCI and the <i>Centre de Conservation et Réhabilitation du Patrimoine Architectural des Zones Atlasiques et Sub-Atlasiques</i> (CERKAS) to rehabilitate the entire architectural ensemble. The selected recording techniques were used for the rapid mapping of conditions of the decorated surfaces at the Caïd Residence using international standards. The resulting work is being used by GCI staff, consultants and CERKAS team to conduct emergency stabilization and protection measures for these important decorated surfaces.

The quest for improvement and upgrading of the historic urban environment through coexisting historical context and new context had introduced tension over the previous years. The resultant flows have jeopardized the harmonious layers of historical settings. The concept of conservation that provides the needed bridge between the forces in many cases implemented exhibits a no consideration of the three polarities that controls historic areas. The aftermath shows up in two ways. At one end is convergence and divergence at the other but the emphasis of this paper focuses on investigating what happens in historic urban environments when annex developments exceed historic limits? Historic Limit (HL) is the hidden benchmark and maximum point of the historic urban environment at which the forces produced by the two contexts coexist elastically. In order to answer the generated question, a literature review of the keywords that constitutes the topic is explored. The ideas of Warren John on ‘interaction’ and that of Getty Conservation Institute on ‘relationship’ that happens in the built above environment will buttress the argument. A model that represents the correlation of the two contexts is developed to simplify the overall intentions of the essay. Another technique is the selection of two composite annex cases to validate the targeted objectives. The article is concluded by recommending that conservation schemes in historic urban landscapes should adopt consensus design strategy for tackling context tension. As a sure way of sustainably welcoming the voices of the community in the process before implementation of the development.

Carrying out patch repairs to historic concrete buildings and structures needs to be done carefully if their cultural value and significance is to be maintained. This often means repairs using custom designed materials and mixes for compatibility with the original concrete, and with great care paid to good workmanship. But with most repairs, commercial mixes are used which are not compatible with the host concrete but are justified because they adhere well, cure quickly and require limited skills to implement. A research collaboration has been established to test the performance of both approaches. The Performance Evaluation of Patch Repairs on Historic Concrete Structures (PEPS) began in 2018 and is a collaboration between the Getty Conservation Institute, Historic England and the Laboratoire de Recherche des Monuments Historiques. Its purpose is also to better understand key design and specification parameters and application methods. The research is based on assessing case studies in USA, England and France within a variety of climatic and environmental conditions, typologies and repair materials. This paper will present the methodology adopted to evaluate the repairs in the first phase. This will also include historical research on the specification and application of the repairs, preliminary field assessment and some testing.

Abstract. The church of Santiago Apóstol of Kuñotambo is located in the southeast area of the Cusco province of Acomayo, containing remarkable interior mural paintings that contribute to the heritage value of the building and the area. The building was studied, conserved and seismically retrofitted as a model project for the Seismic Retrofitting Project (SRP), a collaborative project between the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) and the Ministry of Culture of Peru in Cusco. Carleton Immersive Media Studio (CIMS) participated in the documentation of the decorated surfaces with an initial campaign in 2013, organized a series of workshops on documentation theory and practice with international experts and local professionals in 2017, and carried out a final recording after the conclusion of the site work in 2019. This last documentation phase provided a comprehensive documentation baseline and acquisition guidelines to plan the future long-term care of the decorated surfaces after their conservation. This paper presents the documentation carried out in 2019 and focuses on the three documentation scenarios proposed for the long-term preservation of decorated surfaces in the church: (1) Visual Documentation; (2) Digital Documentation; and (3) Comprehensive Digital Documentation. These different scenarios considered the particularly isolated location of the temple, the availability of equipment, the level of expertise in the different techniques proposed, and the frequency of future monitoring activities. Finally, the required tasks, necessary equipment, and potential challenges are presented for each of the documentation scenarios, with the objective being to offer a sustainable framework over time that serves the future Monitoring Plan for the heritage site.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the Arches heritage inventory and management system for the benefit of practitioners working with heritage inventories. Arches is a modern software platform purpose-built for the creation and management of inventories to support effective heritage place management. The system was developed as open source software jointly by the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) and World Monuments Fund (WMF). Design/methodology/approach – The paper discusses the needs and challenges addressed by the GCI and WMF in developing Arches, explains the system’s design and functionality, reports on software releases and ongoing enhancements, describes current software implementations, and concludes by discussing the role and growth of the open source community and the Arches project’s aspirations. Findings – The needs and challenges in the heritage field that the GCI and WMF originally identified have been confirmed through interactions between the Arches project and a range of practitioners. The suitability of Arches to address these needs is demonstrated through steady growth of the open source community and an increasing number of implementations of the Arches platform. Practical implications – Arches provides a purpose-built system that is freely available and ready for use. It offers a system that requires a marginal investment by organizations compared to building digital inventories from scratch. The Arches project has created an international community of information technology and heritage practitioners to share experience, knowledge, and skills to address their common challenges in dealing with digital inventories. Originality/value – The paper offers heritage practitioners details on a new tool for overcoming their challenges in building and managing digital heritage inventories.

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> The need to share information about architectural heritage effectively after a disaster event, in order to foster its preservation, requires the use of a common language between the involved actors and stakeholders. A database able to connect the architectural heritage representation with the data useful for hazard and risk analysis can thus be a powerful instrument. This paper outlines a methodology to represent 3D models of the architectural heritage, according to some existing standards data models, and relate their geometric features to the damage mechanisms that could occur after an earthquake. Among all the existing standard to represent cartographic, cultural heritage and hazard/risk information, respectively INSPIRE, CityGML, UNESCO, CIDOC-CRM, its extension MONDIS and the Getty Institute vocabularies, compliant to the CIDOC-CRM, have been taken into account. An INSPIRE extension has been proposed for increasing the level of detail (LoD) of the representation and improving the description of heritage buildings, adding some macro-elements and elements “feature types” connected with the damage mechanisms, identified in structural studies. The suggested method allows to archive, in a multi-scale database, 3D information with a very high level of detail about architectural heritage and can help structural engineers and conservator-restorers in preventing further damages through individuating useful targeted actions.</p>

AbstractAs part of a project sponsored by the Getty Conservation Institute to investigate the effects of humidity and temperature on photochemicallyinduced deterioration, the influence of relative humidity on the rates of fading of four traditional artists' pigments has been investigated -- carmine lake, gamboge, alizarin lake and Vandyke brown.

Entre 2015 e 2018, o Laboratório de Ciência da Conservação da EBA-UFMG desenvolveu um projeto denominado Arte Concreta no Brasil: Industrialismo e Vanguarda Latino Americana, através do apoio da Getty Foundation, o qual procurou analisar obras dessa vertente realizadas na década de 1950 a partir dos acervos do MAM-RJ, Pinacoteca-SP, MAP-BH e Coleção Tuiuiú-RJ, em correspondência com as obras da Coleção Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, estudadas pela equipe do Getty Conservation Institute. Por meio da interface entre a História da Arte Técnica e a História da Arte, o projeto produziu um estudo subsidiado das obras selecionadas pela Ciência da Conservação, promovendo novas relações conceituais. Este artigo explora a experimentação como processo a partir de questões postas pela referida pesquisa.

El hormigón es, sin duda, el material simbólico de la arquitectura moderna, paralelo a su desarrollo y determinador de su progreso. A pesar de los avances conseguidos en los últimos años en torno su conservación, siguen presentándose carencias importantes que urgen ser resueltas, carencias ante las cuales el Instituto de Conservación de la Fundación Getty puso en marcha en 2011 la Iniciativa por la Conservación de la Arquitectura Moderna, propuesta basada en el diálogo entre profesionales de diferentes ámbitos. Fruto de esta iniciativa surge Concrete: Case Studies in Conservation Practice (2018), libro inaugural de la serie Conserving Modern Heritage, cuyas páginas han querido desplegarse a modo de puente sobre los vacíos de la cuestión, manual que rehuye de soluciones genéricas y apuesta por la generación del conocimiento desde la experiencia.

A UNESCO project, Support for the Preparation for the World Heritage Serial Nomination of the Silk Roads in South Asia, afforded the opportunity to research evidence for Silk Roads exchange in South Asia. The first part of the paper explores the challenges of archaeology in the Kingdom of Bhutan, located on the southern slopes of the eastern Himalayas. GIS-based approaches to model earlier settlement patterns and trade routes are considered. This led to a discussion with Bhutanese colleagues, in the Division for Conservation of Heritage Sites (DCHS), regarding the need for a digital national heritage inventory: to help manage and protect heritage resources, and to improve the communication of the rich heritage of the country to its people. The second part of this paper explores some of the issues around that debate, and the steps taken to implement the chosen solution: the Getty Conservation Institute/World Monuments Fund ARCHES heritage inventory system.

Los sismos son fenómenos naturales recurrentes que causan daños acumulativos o el colapso de las edificaciones de tierra. En Perú se han descubierto muchas edificaciones construidas en tierra de importante valor patrimonial, que fueron desenterradas y expuestas nuevamente a la actividad sísmica ¿Cómo evitar su progresivo daño mediante sabias intervenciones? Las edificaciones de tierra ubicadas en áreas sísmicas constituyen un caso crítico y único por su paulatina destrucción. La respuesta estructural de la mampostería de piedra asentada con morteros de barro depende del más débil de los materiales de construcción que es la tierra. Se presentan los criterios estructurales de conservación de la arquitectura patrimonial construida en tierra y el uso de herramientas sismorresistentes de reparación y refuerzo desarrolladas por la academia en los últimos 25 años. Se incluyen los conceptos de tierra armada y de inyección de barro líquido desarrollados en la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP) con el apoyo de la Getty Conservation Institute (GCI). Se analizan casos recientes de re-intervención de monumentos reparados inicialmente el siglo pasado y re-destruidos por sismos recientes, y se presentan soluciones que van desde las más prudentes hasta las más agresivas. Se concluye en la urgencia de revisar los criterios de conservación expresados en las Cartas Internacionales adoptadas por ICOMOS y UNESCO para el caso de la arquitectura patrimonial en tierra ubicada en áreas sísmicas.

The curtain rose. The howling of desert wind filled the performance hall in the Shanghai Grand Theatre. Into the center stage, where a scenic construction of a mountain cliff and a desert landscape was dimly lit, entered the character of the Daoist priest Wang Yuanlu (1849–1931), performed by Chen Yizong. Dressed in a worn and dusty outfit of dark blue cotton, characteristic of Daoist priests, Wang began to sweep the floor. After a few moments, he discovered a hidden chambre sealed inside one of the rock sanctuaries carved into the cliff.Signaled by the quick, crystalline, stirring wave of sound from the chimes, a melodious Chinese ocarina solo joined in slowly from the background. Astonished by thousands of Buddhist sūtra scrolls, wall paintings, and sculptures he had just accidentally discovered in the caves, Priest Wang set his broom aside and began to examine these treasures. Dawn had not yet arrived, and the desert sky was pitch-black. Priest Wang held his oil lamp high, strode rhythmically in excitement, sat crossed-legged in a meditative pose, and unfolded a scroll. The sound of the ocarina became fuller and richer and the texture of the music more complex, as several other instruments joined in.Below is the opening scene of the award-winning, theatrical dance-drama Dunhuang, My Dreamland, created by China’s state-sponsored Lanzhou Song and Dance Theatre in 2000. Figure 1a: Poster Side A of Dunhuang, My Dreamland Figure 1b: Poster Side B of Dunhuang, My DreamlandThe scene locates the dance-drama in the rock sanctuaries that today are known as the Dunhuang Mogao Caves, housing Buddhist art accumulated over a period of a thousand years, one of the best well-known UNESCO heritages on the Silk Road. Historically a frontier metropolis, Dunhuang was a strategic site along the Silk Road in northwestern China, a crossroads of trade, and a locus for religious, cultural, and intellectual influences since the Han dynasty (206 B.C.E.–220 C.E.). Travellers, especially Buddhist monks from India and central Asia, passing through Dunhuang on their way to Chang’an (present day Xi’an), China’s ancient capital, would stop to meditate in the Mogao Caves and consult manuscripts in the monastery's library. At the same time, Chinese pilgrims would travel by foot from China through central Asia to Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, playing a key role in the exchanges between ancient China and the outside world. Travellers from China would stop to acquire provisions at Dunhuang before crossing the Gobi Desert to continue on their long journey abroad. Figure 2: Dunhuang Mogao CavesThis article approaches the idea of “abroad” by examining the present-day imagination of journeys along the Silk Road—specifically, staged performances of the various Silk Road journey-themed dance-dramas sponsored by the Chinese state for enhancing its cultural and foreign policies since the 1970s (Kuang).As ethnomusicologists have demonstrated, musicians, choreographers, and playwrights often utilise historical materials in their performances to construct connections between the past and the present (Bohlman; Herzfeld; Lam; Rees; Shelemay; Tuohy; Wade; Yung: Rawski; Watson). The ancient Silk Road, which linked the Mediterranean coast with central China and beyond, via oasis towns such as Samarkand, has long been associated with the concept of “journeying abroad.” Journeys to distant, foreign lands and encounters of unknown, mysterious cultures along the Silk Road have been documented in historical records, such as A Record of Buddhist Kingdoms (Faxian) and The Great Tang Records on the Western Regions (Xuanzang), and illustrated in classical literature, such as The Travels of Marco Polo (Polo) and the 16th century Chinese novel Journey to the West (Wu). These journeys—coming and going from multiple directions and to different destinations—have inspired contemporary staged performance for audiences around the globe.Home and Abroad: Dunhuang and the Silk RoadDunhuang, My Dreamland (2000), the contemporary dance-drama, staged the journey of a young pilgrim painter travelling from Chang’an to a land of the unfamiliar and beyond borders, in search for the arts that have inspired him. Figure 3: A scene from Dunhuang, My Dreamland showing the young pilgrim painter in the Gobi Desert on the ancient Silk RoadFar from his home, he ended his journey in Dunhuang, historically considered the northwestern periphery of China, well beyond Yangguan and Yumenguan, the bordering passes that separate China and foreign lands. Later scenes in Dunhuang, My Dreamland, portrayed through multiethnic music and dances, the dynamic interactions among merchants, cultural and religious envoys, warriors, and politicians that were making their own journey from abroad to China. The theatrical dance-drama presents a historically inspired, re-imagined vision of both “home” and “abroad” to its audiences as they watch the young painter travel along the Silk Road, across the Gobi Desert, arriving at his own ideal, artistic “homeland”, the Dunhuang Mogao Caves. Since his journey is ultimately a spiritual one, the conceptualisation of travelling “abroad” could also be perceived as “a journey home.”Staged more than four hundred times since it premiered in Beijing in April 2000, Dunhuang, My Dreamland is one of the top ten titles in China’s National Stage Project and one of the most successful theatrical dance-dramas ever produced in China. With revenue of more than thirty million renminbi (RMB), it ranks as the most profitable theatrical dance-drama ever produced in China, with a preproduction cost of six million RMB. The production team receives financial support from China’s Ministry of Culture for its “distinctive ethnic features,” and its “aim to promote traditional Chinese culture,” according to Xu Rong, an official in the Cultural Industry Department of the Ministry. Labeled an outstanding dance-drama of the Chinese nation, it aims to present domestic and international audiences with a vision of China as a historically multifaceted and cosmopolitan nation that has been in close contact with the outside world through the ancient Silk Road. Its production company has been on tour in selected cities throughout China and in countries abroad, including Austria, Spain, and France, literarily making the young pilgrim painter’s “journey along the Silk Road” a new journey abroad, off stage and in reality.Dunhuang, My Dreamland was not the first, nor is it the last, staged performances that portrays the Chinese re-imagination of “journeying abroad” along the ancient Silk Road. It was created as one of many versions of Dunhuang bihua yuewu, a genre of music, dance, and dramatic performances created in the early twentieth century and based primarily on artifacts excavated from the Mogao Caves (Kuang). “The Mogao Caves are the greatest repository of early Chinese art,” states Mimi Gates, who works to increase public awareness of the UNESCO site and raise funds toward its conservation. “Located on the Chinese end of the Silk Road, it also is the place where many cultures of the world intersected with one another, so you have Greek and Roman, Persian and Middle Eastern, Indian and Chinese cultures, all interacting. Given the nature of our world today, it is all very relevant” (Pollack). As an expressive art form, this genre has been thriving since the late 1970s contributing to the global imagination of China’s “Silk Road journeys abroad” long before Dunhuang, My Dreamland achieved its domestic and international fame. For instance, in 2004, The Thousand-Handed and Thousand-Eyed Avalokiteśvara—one of the most representative (and well-known) Dunhuang bihua yuewu programs—was staged as a part of the cultural program during the Paralympic Games in Athens, Greece. This performance, as well as other Dunhuang bihua yuewu dance programs was the perfect embodiment of a foreign religion that arrived in China from abroad and became Sinicized (Kuang). Figure 4: Mural from Dunhuang Mogao Cave No. 45A Brief History of Staging the Silk Road JourneysThe staging of the Silk Road journeys abroad began in the late 1970s. Historically, the Silk Road signifies a multiethnic, cosmopolitan frontier, which underwent incessant conflicts between Chinese sovereigns and nomadic peoples (as well as between other groups), but was strongly imbued with the customs and institutions of central China (Duan, Mair, Shi, Sima). In the twentieth century, when China was no longer an empire, but had become what the early 20th-century reformer Liang Qichao (1873–1929) called “a nation among nations,” the long history of the Silk Road and the colourful, legendary journeys abroad became instrumental in the formation of a modern Chinese nation of unified diversity rooted in an ancient cosmopolitan past. The staged Silk Road theme dance-dramas thus participate in this formation of the Chinese imagination of “nation” and “abroad,” as they aestheticise Chinese history and geography. History and geography—aspects commonly considered constituents of a nation as well as our conceptualisations of “abroad”—are “invariably aestheticized to a certain degree” (Bakhtin 208). Diverse historical and cultural elements from along the Silk Road come together in this performance genre, which can be considered the most representative of various possible stagings of the history and culture of the Silk Road journeys.In 1979, the Chinese state officials in Gansu Province commissioned the benchmark dance-drama Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road, a spectacular theatrical dance-drama praising the pure and noble friendship which existed between the peoples of China and other countries in the Tang dynasty (618-907 C.E.). While its plot also revolves around the Dunhuang Caves and the life of a painter, staged at one of the most critical turning points in modern Chinese history, the work as a whole aims to present the state’s intention of re-establishing diplomatic ties with the outside world after the Cultural Revolution. Unlike Dunhuang, My Dreamland, it presents a nation’s journey abroad and home. To accomplish this goal, Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road introduces the fictional character Yunus, a wealthy Persian merchant who provides the audiences a vision of the historical figure of Peroz III, the last Sassanian prince, who after the Arab conquest of Iran in 651 C.E., found refuge in China. By incorporating scenes of ethnic and folk dances, the drama then stages the journey of painter Zhang’s daughter Yingniang to Persia (present-day Iran) and later, Yunus’s journey abroad to the Tang dynasty imperial court as the Persian Empire’s envoy.Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road, since its debut at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on the first of October 1979 and shortly after at the Theatre La Scala in Milan, has been staged in more than twenty countries and districts, including France, Italy, Japan, Thailand, Russia, Latvia, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and recently, in 2013, at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York.“The Road”: Staging the Journey TodayWithin the contemporary context of global interdependencies, performing arts have been used as strategic devices for social mobilisation and as a means to represent and perform modern national histories and foreign policies (Davis, Rees, Tian, Tuohy, Wong, David Y. H. Wu). The Silk Road has been chosen as the basis for these state-sponsored, extravagantly produced, and internationally staged contemporary dance programs. In 2008, the welcoming ceremony and artistic presentation at the Olympic Games in Beijing featured twenty apsara dancers and a Dunhuang bihua yuewu dancer with long ribbons, whose body was suspended in mid-air on a rectangular LED extension held by hundreds of performers; on the giant LED screen was a depiction of the ancient Silk Road.In March 2013, Chinese president Xi Jinping introduced the initiatives “Silk Road Economic Belt” and “21st Century Maritime Silk Road” during his journeys abroad in Kazakhstan and Indonesia. These initiatives are now referred to as “One Belt, One Road.” The State Council lists in details the policies and implementation plans for this initiative on its official web page, www.gov.cn. In April 2013, the China Institute in New York launched a yearlong celebration, starting with "Dunhuang: Buddhist Art and the Gateway of the Silk Road" with a re-creation of one of the caves and a selection of artifacts from the site. In March 2015, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s top economic planning agency, released a new action plan outlining key details of the “One Belt, One Road” initiative. Xi Jinping has made the program a centrepiece of both his foreign and domestic economic policies. One of the central economic strategies is to promote cultural industry that could enhance trades along the Silk Road.Encouraged by the “One Belt, One Road” policies, in March 2016, The Silk Princess premiered in Xi’an and was staged at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing the following July. While Dunhuang, My Dreamland and Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road were inspired by the Buddhist art found in Dunhuang, The Silk Princess, based on a story about a princess bringing silk and silkworm-breeding skills to the western regions of China in the Tang Dynasty (618-907) has a different historical origin. The princess's story was portrayed in a woodblock from the Tang Dynasty discovered by Sir Marc Aurel Stein, a British archaeologist during his expedition to Xinjiang (now Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region) in the early 19th century, and in a temple mural discovered during a 2002 Chinese-Japanese expedition in the Dandanwulike region. Figure 5: Poster of The Silk PrincessIn January 2016, the Shannxi Provincial Song and Dance Troupe staged The Silk Road, a new theatrical dance-drama. Unlike Dunhuang, My Dreamland, the newly staged dance-drama “centers around the ‘road’ and the deepening relationship merchants and travellers developed with it as they traveled along its course,” said Director Yang Wei during an interview with the author. According to her, the show uses seven archetypes—a traveler, a guard, a messenger, and so on—to present the stories that took place along this historic route. Unbounded by specific space or time, each of these archetypes embodies the foreign-travel experience of a different group of individuals, in a manner that may well be related to the social actors of globalised culture and of transnationalism today. Figure 6: Poster of The Silk RoadConclusionAs seen in Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road and Dunhuang, My Dreamland, staging the processes of Silk Road journeys has become a way of connecting the Chinese imagination of “home” with the Chinese imagination of “abroad.” Staging a nation’s heritage abroad on contemporary stages invites a new imagination of homeland, borders, and transnationalism. Once aestheticised through staged performances, such as that of the Dunhuang bihua yuewu, the historical and topological landscape of Dunhuang becomes a performed narrative, embodying the national heritage.The staging of Silk Road journeys continues, and is being developed into various forms, from theatrical dance-drama to digital exhibitions such as the Smithsonian’s Pure Land: Inside the Mogao Grottes at Dunhuang (Stromberg) and the Getty’s Cave Temples of Dunhuang: Buddhist Art on China's Silk Road (Sivak and Hood). 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