第2个回答 2013-03-27
The Chinese collection is most famous for the Buddhist paintings from the Dunhuang caves in Central Asia and the ‘Admonitions of the Governess’, widely regarded as the most important scroll-painting in the history of Chinese art. The Chinese collections also include examples of lacquer, bronze, jade and definitive holdings of Chinese ceramics and porcelain. The department also has one of the earliest and largest ethnographic collections of textiles and everyday objects from South East Asia.
The collection of the Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas includes around 350,000 objects, representing the cultures of the indigenous peoples of four continents.
The scope of the collection is contemporary, archaeological and historical. It includes most of Africa (outside Ancient Egypt, Sudan and the Mediterranean) the Pacific and Australia, as well as the Americas. Most of the collections were acquired during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and largely date from this time.
Research and collecting continues today in Alaska, the Canadian Arctic, the South West of the United States, and the Northwest Coast of America. Projects are underway in the Caribbean, Ecuador and Peru, and in the Pacific in Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands. In Africa the focus is on Ghana and Mali in West Africa, and on Ethiopia, Kenya and Mozambique in the east.
Between 1970 and 1997 the department (then known as the Department of Ethnography) was well known for its lively exhibitions and related activities which took place at the Museum of Mankind. Since it returned to the main Museum site in Bloomsbury, the department has continued to display its collection in permanent galleries and a number of highly-successful temporary exhibitions.
Access to European and Asian ethnography acquired before 2004 is managed through the Centre of Anthropology, or alternatively by through the departments of Prehistory and Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.