The British Museum has recently undertaken an extensive program of collaboration with museums in China, building on a network of existing curatorial relationships.

In 2005, it signed a historic agreement with the National Museum of China in Beijing, followed by a similar agreement in 2006 with the Palace Museum, Beijing. These agreements will facilitate future collaborative projects, including the loan of terracotta soldiers from Xi'an, and in return, the loan by the British Museum of exhibitions of world cultures unrepresented in Chinese collections.

To date, four British Museum touring exhibitions have been sent to venues in China. Treasures of the World's Cultures: the British Museum after 250 Years was seen by more than 200,000 visitors to the Capital Museum in Beijing and has just opened in Taiwan. Art and Empire, an exhibition of Assyrian material, was lent to the Shanghai Museum and attracted well over 300,000 visitors.

In March 2007, the British Museum opened an exhibition jointly with the Palace Museum in Beijing. The show entitled Britain Meets the World explores Britain's relationships across the globe during the Georgian period, as it emerged as an international power.

"It was the first time we undertook such a close collaboration," says Hannah Boulton, communications manager of the British Museum.

According to Jane Portal, curator of the present terracotto exhibition and also an expert on Chinese culture, future loan exhibitions will focus on world cultures not currently represented in Chinese collections. An exhibition on ancient Greece will travel to Shanghai and Beijing in 2008, followed by a focus on ancient Egypt and India. This program of loan exhibitions will run between 2008 and 2012, spanning the Cultural Olympiad.

"These collaborations will also tap into the wealth of expertise available at both the British Museum and its key partners in China and the potential for cross-cultural and academic exchanges, providing an invaluable communication of expert curatorial and artistic knowledge," says Boulton.

For example, the British Museum sent specialists to the Palace Museum in Beijing, to conduct a survey of the museum's European clock collection and curators from the Palace Museum made a return visit to London in October last year.

Chinese art scholars have agreed to assist the British Museum over the next five years in producing an online catalogue of the 1,000 Chinese paintings in the Museum's collection.

(China Daily September 14, 2007)