Last month, a new exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History opened, called "Traveling the Silk Road". The exhibit features Silk Road artifacts and displays about that vast network of roads which connected the far-flung communities of Asia, from Chang'An in China to the Roman empire, beginning in the second century BC.
In honor of this new exhibit, I've constructed a photo essay comparing some late 19th/early 20th century photographs of Silk Road caravans and markets with the displays in the museum, using some photos provided by the AMNH and others from the U.S. Library of Congress.
The exhibit itself is scheduled to run between November 15, 2009 and August 15, 2010. If you're in the New York City area sometime in the next several months, be sure to drop in!
- Traveling the Silk Road: A Photo Essay
- Traveling the Silk Road, Official Exhibition webpage at the AMNH
- Information Highway: Camel Speed but Exotic Links, review of the exhibition by Edward Rothstein in the NYT
- Along the Silk Road, background
Comments
Brilliant!
One of our hobbies is travelling parts of the Silk Road(s) whenever possible, especially clambering over/through the many ancient ruined caravanserais en route.
A few thousand miles to go yet before completion though!
I love learning new things about the silk road. Silk is such a beautiful & wonderful fabric it’s a wonder we don’t use it more often. Great article…