Museum hosting travel, culture exposition

From graffiti and Tibetan calligraphy to sculptures and thangkas, the Tibet Museum will display the best of its collections at the Third China Tibet International Tourism and Culture Expo this week.

Exhibitions showcasing traditional culture in the Tibet autonomous region have been open to the public at the museum in Lhasa, since the expo began on Saturday.

“The graffiti collection is a collision of street art and Tibetan traditional culture, which aims to attract young people,” said Dadron, deputy curator of the TibetMuseum.

“Hosting these exhibitions is part of our effort to make the museum a place that preserves and promotes Tibetan traditional culture,” the 42-year-old said.

The museum wants to improve the public services it provides and display the achievements it has made in the preservation of traditional culture, she said.

The museum will also showcase cultural and creative tourism products during the expo, which runs through Friday.

As the first and only provincial-level museum in Tibet, the Tibet Museum distinguishes itself from other museums in China through its unique architecture, historical cultural relics, geographical features and other ethnic elements.

“Our thangkas, Buddha statues and ancient documents are distinctive. We have items that cannot be found elsewhere, especially our historical cultural relics, which are the most unique feature of the museum, displaying gifts which the successive central governments presented to the Tibet local government,” Dadron said.

The Tibet Museum opened in 1999, and entry has been free of charge since 2009. The museum, which has more than 150 staff members, is ranked as one of China’s 88 national firstgrade museums, according to Dadron.

Before the museum offered free entry, it saw an average of 200,000 visitors annually. The figure has increased in recent years, with the museum welcoming more than 400,000 visitors in 2015.

The museum’s permanent exhibition hall contains the basic exhibition and a special pavilion.

The special pavilion displays artifacts such as porcelain collections, jade collections and Buddha statues. XuWei contributed to this story.

Dadron, deputy curator of the Tibet Museum