What are the highlights of the new Sanxingdui Museum? | New Museum | Highlights

Three major exhibition areas present the latest achievements, with over 600 cultural relics showcasing their stunning debut

What are the highlights of the new Sanxingdui Museum

Guangming Daily reporter Zhou Hongshuang and Li Xiaodong

The new Sanxingdui Museum has recently started trial operation. Since 2019, Sanxingdui has once again awakened and shocked the world, with over 17000 pieces of various cultural relics such as ivory, bronze, gold, and jade unearthed. To better showcase the unearthed cultural relics, the new Sanxingdui Museum started construction in March 2022 and was officially completed 16 months later.

The stunning appearance of the new Sanxingdui Museum combines the original ecological image of Sanxingdui, with three volume units facing the direction of the site area, forming a spatial dialogue between the museum and the site area; The content exhibition presents more than 1500 most representative cultural relics, utilizing advanced science and technology to comprehensively and systematically showcase the archaeological excavations and latest research achievements of Sanxingdui.

The new Sanxingdui Museum is also deeply integrating digital and intelligent technologies into architectural design technology, cultural relic preservation, exhibition and display, building a smart museum, creating a composite cultural and creative space, and bringing visitors a more intuitive, vivid, and convenient exhibition experience.

Photo by Liu Kun, Xinhua News Agency reporter, inside the new Sanxingdui Museum

Photo by Liu Kun, a journalist from Xinhua News Agency, of the bronze portrait of a person wearing a golden mask on display

Photo by Liu Kun, a journalist from Xinhua News Agency, of the exhibited bronze mythical beast

Three exhibition areas reveal the password of ancient Shu civilization

The new exhibition hall is divided into three major parts: "Chasing Dreams in the Century", "Weiran Wangdu", and "Heaven, Earth, People, and Gods". It showcases the latest achievements of archaeological excavation and research in the past and present lives of the Sanxingdui site from multiple levels and angles, and displays more than 1500 cultural relics.

The first exhibition area, "Chasing Dreams in the Century," consists of three units: "First Understanding of Sanxingdui," "One Awakening Starts the World," and "Continuation of Splendor in a Prosperous Era." It focuses on the major archaeological discoveries and research achievements of the Sanxingdui site in the past century, showcasing the century long pursuit of dreams and unwavering spirit of archaeologists in Sanxingdui, and highlighting the theme of building a "Chinese style and Chinese style archaeology with Chinese characteristics.".

The second exhibition area, "Weiran Wangdu," consists of seven units: "Abundant Sichuan Soil," "Capital Construction," "Gold Processing," "Jade Making," "Bronze Casting," "Supreme King," and "Multidimensional Symbiosis." From the perspective of exploring the origin of civilization, it comprehensively displays and interprets the natural environment, social landscape, capital layout, handicraft technology, and power structure of the ancient Sanxingdui Kingdom.

The third exhibition area, "Heaven, Earth, and Human Gods," consists of seven units: "Using Jade to Connect Gods," "Collecting Rites in Objects," "Sacred Altars," "Bronze Masks," "Bird Feet Statues," "Spirituality in All Things," and "Heaven Connecting Tree." The exhibition focuses on showcasing the exquisite cultural relics unearthed from the sacrificial area, highlighting the important ritual vessels, main sacrificial behaviors, worshipped objects, their belief systems, and cosmological concepts used by the ancient Shu people in sacrificial activities. It showcases the romantic imagination and extraordinary creativity of the ancient Shu ancestors, and through the interpretation of the spiritual world and cultural origins of the ancient Shu people, reveals the secret code of ancient Shu civilization, showcases the common beliefs and spiritual roots of the Chinese nation.

The exhibition has a novel design, which strengthens the visual impact and artistic appeal of cultural relics through the construction of large fields and scenes. The unveiling of the section of the Moon Bay city wall on a large scale showcases the atmosphere of the Sanxingdui royal capital; Reorganize large-scale pottery, bronze portrait arrays, bronze divine trees, and other large-scale scenes to narrate the historical context of Sanxingdui. The experience of visiting cultural relics has been comprehensively upgraded, using exhibition cabinets and exhibition lighting containing new technologies to truly restore the color patterns of cultural relics and present the beauty of Sanxingdui cultural relics.

More than 600 cultural relics on display for the first time

The new museum exhibits over 1500 cultural relics, including pottery, bronze, jade, gold, ivory, and other categories. There are over 600 cultural relics on display for the first time, including over 300 newly unearthed cultural relics from the Sanxingdui No. 3-8 sacrificial pits. Bronze altars, bird foot statues, animal riding top statues, turtle shaped grid shaped vessels, standing figures in skirts, tiger headed dragon body statues and other heavy objects were all unveiled.

In order to ensure that the unearthed heavy artifacts such as the bronze animal riding top statue and bronze altar from the "New Six Pits" in Sanxingdui can be displayed in the new museum and meet the audience, while also ensuring the smooth progress of the next step of cultural relic protection and research work, the new museum adopts a new exhibition method of digital restoration demonstration.

The digital restoration demonstration utilizes restoration experts and AI algorithms to match cultural relics, utilizing multimedia interpretation to achieve a one-to-one realistic assembly and restoration of relevant heavy objects, as well as an animated display of detailed interpretation. This new exhibition method combines AI technology and 3D printing for cultural relic restoration and exhibition, balancing the needs of cultural relic protection and display effects, fully reflecting the achievements of the integration of Sanxingdui culture and technology.

The combination of bronze altars has been disclosed for the first time to the public. It is composed of a combination of bronze mythical beasts unearthed from the No. 8 sacrificial pit, a hollow pedestal with 13 small bronze figures on it, a bronze top altar portrait and a bronze bird holding standing portrait unearthed from the No. 3 sacrificial pit, a bronze top kneeling and sitting portrait unearthed from the No. 7 sacrificial pit, and a bronze trumpet seat top kneeling and sitting portrait unearthed from the No. 2 sacrificial pit. The complex shape and rich connotation reflect the sacrificial scenes of ancient Shu.

The statue of the Cavalry Beast Top Zun is composed of a bronze statue from the mouth edge of the second pit, a kneeling statue of the bronze statue from the third pit, and a bronze divine beast from the eighth pit. Two cultural relics have gone through more than 3000 years of honing, with fragile bodies and a height of over 2 meters. They are displayed in 1:1 cultural relic models through AI technology and 3D printing. This not only meets the demand for safe and stable exhibition of cultural relics, but also allows the audience to see the uniqueness and beauty of cultural relics.

Activating display brings a brand new exhibition experience

The new Sanxingdui Museum relies on mobile Internet, cloud computing, big data, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and other technologies to build a smart museum system including a comprehensive management platform, a smart navigation system, a smart explanation system, a ticketing system, a collection management system, an academic resource management system, online monitoring of documents, portals, and public service resources, providing modern, scientific and technological choices for the public to watch exhibitions.

The "Fangcang Archaeology" exhibition item in the "Century Chasing Dreams" exhibition area of the new museum adopts the latest naked eye three-dimensional new media technology to restore the archaeological Fangcang to the exhibition hall, reflecting the excavation work of six new pits in the Sanxingdui site sacrificial area. The playback server it uses is based on a professional graphics workstation, creating the most cutting-edge visual art and allowing tourists to immerse themselves in the archaeological excavation scenes of the Sanxingdui sacrificial pit.

The "Sandtable Folding Screen of Sanxingdui Ruins" in the "Weiran Wangdu" exhibition area adopts the most complex projector matrix seamless fusion technology currently available, combined with the most advanced synchronous playback system, to achieve the simultaneous playback of nearly 20 ultra-high definition images with a delay of no more than 3 milliseconds. In real time, dozens of projection matrix images are integrated, providing visitors with a smooth interpretation of the overall picture of Sanxingdui Ancient City.

In the cultural and creative service area, a large number of newly launched Sanxingdui cultural and creative products highlight the "mysterious texture" and "design tone". The series of chapter collection products and research-oriented products have a great sense of experience, including various trendy elements such as science popularization, graffiti, chapter collection, and cards. Sanxingdui Post Office has the world's only dedicated postal code and postal timestamp, providing an interactive experience product of "Sanxingdui+Post" through various forms such as physical stores and online post offices.