LOS ANGELES (AP) – For a thousand years China’s Cave Temples of Dunhuang were a popular traveler’s rest stop, marketplace and religious shrine on the fabled Silk Road. Now they are coming to Los Angeles, both in spirit and reality.
In an exhibition curators say is unprecedented, three full-scale, hand-painted replica caves have been erected on The Getty Center museum’s hilltop campus overlooking LA.
Nearby, in an adjacent gallery, the museum has assembled more than 40 spectacularly preserved and priceless artifacts taken from one of the caves, and in still another gallery visitors can take a 3-D virtual reality tour of on an actual cave in China, this one filled with life-size sculptures of the Buddha and his entourage.
“We’re trying to help the public understand what this place is, where it is and why it’s important,” Tim Whalen, director of the Getty Conservation Institute, said during a recent tour of “Cave Temples of Dunhuang: Buddhist Art on the Silk Road,” which opens Saturday.
“By any standard,” he added, “Dunhuang is one of the most important heritage places in the world.”