MUSEUM CAMPUS — Some "terracotta warriors," the famed life-size statues of soldiers who guarded an ancient Chinese emperor's tomb, will appear in Chicago this spring.
The exhibit will open March 4 on the ground floor of the Field Museum, 1400 S. Lake Shore Drive, said Ray DeThorne, the museum's chief marketing officer. The touring exhibit will make a temporary stay, but Chicago will be the statues' only North American stop "for a while," DeThorne said.
Farmers in central China stumbled upon the "army" comprised of thousands of statues in the 1970s. They were buried with Qin Shi Huang, ancient China's first emperor who conquered and united the nation's warring states in 221 BC. The soldiers each have unique faces, and were once painted, DeThorne said.
The Field will receive original statues as well as replicas, DeThorne said. The exhibit will replace a temporary "Mammoths and Mastodons" exhibit and sit next to an exhibit on ancient Greece opening in November. The terracotta warriors, which in years past have appeared stateside in Washington and San Francisco, follow the Field's opening of a permanent China exhibit this summer.
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