Ancient Bronzes on the Asian Grasslandsfrom the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation

University of Wyoming Art Museum, 2007Educational Packet developed for grades K-12

Introduction

In this museum visit students will view the steppe art from the renowned collections of the late Arthur M. Sackler, M. D. The exhibition brings to life the complex cultures that flourished across the Asian grasslands from northern China and Mongolia into Eastern Europe during the late second and first millennia BCE. Illuminating how these societies influenced, and were influenced by, the culture of dynastic China, the exhibition illustrates the important role of the steppe peoples in facilitating trade and travel along the Silk Route across Asia.

The Eurasian grasslands, also known as the steppes, cover a region extending from northern China westward through Mongolia to the plains of Eastern Europe. This exhibition focuses on the eastern or Asian steppes whose rolling grassy plains are punctuated by snow-topped mountain ranges like the Tien Shan (Heavenly Mountains), and deserts like the Gobi and Taklamakan. The eastern steppes were home to a remarkable culture, whose art, richly decorated with animal motifs, is only now beginning to be understood by scholars. The bronze ornaments, weapons, tools and vessels presented in this exhibition, provide a glimpse into the lives of the ancient peoples of the steppes including their work, dress, spiritual beliefs and social structure.

In the twenty-first century BCE (ca. 2000 BCE), villages of farmers, hunters, and fishermen populated the grasslands. By the late fifteenth century (ca. 1400 BCE) many people left their villages to range widely over the steppes, managing herds of sheep, goats, cattle and horses. They sold meat, wool and leather to people living in the cities of Asia, and became increasingly dependent on the settled population for agricultural produce and manufactured goods. Horses, first domesticated in the steppes, were integral to this new way of life. They allowed the herdsmen to range farther for grass, and to manage large flocks and herds. BY the early eighth century (900 BCE) the steppe dwellers, now legendary as riders and breeders, began to supply horses to the empires of eastern and western Asia.

The steppe peoples were pastoralist who traveled to specific regions in a seasonal cycle to provide grazing land for their livestock. They had no permanent dwellings, living instead in portable, tent-like structures. The modern equivalents of these shelters are Turkic yurts and Mongolian gers. Large cemeteries, discovered during archaeological excavations, probably served as clan or tribal centers.The famous trade routes linking Asia and Europe in ancient times, such as the Silk Road that connected China and Rome, passed through the grasslands. The steppe peoples guided and supplied the trade caravans that followed these routes, playing an essential role in the transportation of goods and ideas between east and west.

Buckle plaqueNorthern China2nd century BCE

Though they belonged to different tribes and clans, and spoke several different languages, the people who lived in the Asian grasslands shared the same manner of living, dress, social organization and spiritual beliefs. They left few written records of their own, so some of our knowledge is based on the accounts of writers who were not part of their culture. Best known are the inhabitants of the western steppes, Scythians, Sauromatians, and related Saka tribes, who were described by the Greek historian Herodotus. The eastern steppe peoples like the Wuhan, Xianbei, and Xiongnu were chronicled by the ancient Chinese historians. However, much of our information comes from archaeological excavations carried out over the last thirty years.

Because the steppe peoples did not share the urban values of the Greeks or the dynastic Chinese, they were considered barbarians. In fact, they had a complex culture that efficiently used the resources around them. They relied primarily on animals, both wild and domestic, to provide food, shelter and clothing, and were so successful in this that they supplied great herds of livestock, particularly horses, to the settled regions of Asia. Their intimate knowledge of the routes across the steppes and mountains, the sources of water, and the seasonal changes in climate were invaluable to the caravans of the Silk Road.

The basic social unit sees to have been the family, then the clan and finally the tribe. Archaeological evidence suggests that high-ranking individuals of different clans and tribes may have intermarried. At one point, Chinese princesses were married to grassland chieftains to secure their allegiance and cooperation.

The steppe dwellers made art objects that were easy to carry, pack or wear because of their mobile lifestyle. They favored bronze for its strength, light weight and resilience, and used it to make tools, weapons, vessels, and ornaments to decorate their clothing. Steppe artisans made small bronze plaques and roundels in abstracted animal and bird forms. Decorative one-and two-piece bronze buckles were another important steppe artifact. The horses that carried the steppe dwellers in life, and were often buried with them in death, were also decorated with bronze ornaments. Bronze is the best-documented artistic medium, but remains of wool and silk textiles, felt appliqués, wooden cups, leather bags, and birch bark containers have also been excavated at archaeological sites.

The only large-scale sculptures produced by the grasslands cultures are “deer stones”, tall obelisk-like stones each depicting a simplified male figure. Details such as earrings, necklaces, and tools and weapons hanging form belts show us how the ornaments and gear were carried. Images of wild game, usually deer, were carved in low relief over the remaining surface. The deer stones were placed at cemetery sites, and more than 500 are known in Mongolia. Others have been found throughout the steppes as far west as Germany. Petroglyphs, simply incised figures of men, horses, and game animals cut into rocks, have also been found in a few regions., like the Minusinsk basin in southern Siberia.

History

How the Sackler steppes collection was formed:

Arthur M. Sackler, M.D., a research psychiatrist and publisher, was born in Brooklyn, New York. Early in his career he pioneered research on the causal relationship between chemical imbalance

OrnamentNorthern China or Inner Mongolia5th–3rd century BCE

and mental illness. In the 1940s he joined the medical advertising firm of William Douglas McAdams, eventually owning the agency. Dr. Sackler founded Medical Tribune, the first medical newspaper for physicians in 1960 and was its international publisher. At the time of his death in 1987 the journal was published in 21 countries.

An avid student of art history, Dr. Sackler began to purchase European and American art in the 1930s. “One wonderful day in 1950,” he said, “I came upon some Chinese ceramics and Ming furniture. My life has not been the same since.”

Asian art, especially Chinese bronzes and jades, came to form the core of the Arthur M. Sackler Collections. “I collect as a biologist,” Dr. Sackler said. “To really understand a civilization or a society, you must have a large enough corpus of data.” As he studied the arts of Asia, he began to see the influence one culture had upon another; Dr. Sackler’s Asian collection included art from China, Korea, Cambodia, India, Japan, and ancient Iran. Eventually his interests expanded to include Italian maiolica and European terracotta sculpture from the 14th to the early 20th century. He wrote, “Art and science are two sides of the same coin. Science is a discipline pursued with passion; art is a passion pursued with discipline. At pursing both, I’ve had a lot of fun.”

The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, opened on the Mall in Washington, D. C. just four months after the sudden death of its principal benefactor. Dr. Sackler had assisted funding the building and, as an inaugural gift, donated 1, 000 objects from his collections and the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation’s collection. Together with his brothers Mortimer and Raymond, he funded the Sackler Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, to house the Temple of Dendur; the Sackler School of Medicine in Tel Aviv; the Sackler Institute of Graduate Biomedical Science at New York University; and the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at Tuft University. He also supported the construction of the Arthur M. Sackler Museum at Harvard University.

Arthur M. Sackler FoundationNew York, New York

The Arthur M. Sackler Foundation was created in 1965 to make available to the public Dr. Sackler’s extensive art collection.

The foundation collection was formed through purchases of art selected by Dr. Sackler and gifts from Dr. Sackler and his family. It consists of over 1, 110 works of art ranging from Chinese ritual bronzes and ceramics to Buddhist stone sculpture and the remowned Chu Silk Manuscript, the oldest existing Chinese written document.

Since 1973, the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation has organized numerous exhibitions of the Foundation’s collection and the Arthur M. Sackler Collections that have traveled extensively throughout the United State and abroad. It has also published eleven scholarly art catalogues of the Arthur M. Sackler Collections. The Foundation has donated art to museums in the United States

Buckle plaqueNorthern China2nd century BCE

since its inception. Currently the Foundation has works of art on loan to many museums including the Museum of Fines Arts, Boston; the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington D.C.; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

How the Sackler Steppes Collection was Formed

Most of the pieces in this exhibition were acquired in China during the 1920s and ‘30s by American teachers and medical missionaries, E. K. and Grace Goodrich Smith, and William and Isabel Ingram Mayer. Other pieces were originally owned by Dagny Carter, author of several books on Chinese art and widow of the missionary and China scholar, Thomas F. Carter, and by the German diplomat Walther Dietrich Hoops. These early collectors lived and worked in northern China and Inner Mongolia, were fluent in Chinese, and had a deep interest in the ancient cultures of China.

The works exhibited here form two general groups. The oldest pieces, those dated in the second half of the second millennium BCE (ca. 1400-1000 BCE), are primarily works associated with shamanic activities. Bronzes from the first millennium BCE emphasize personal adornment and clan or tribal affiliation. The shift in focus may reflect the increased wealth of the steppe dwellers in the period.

Dr. Sackler acquired these historic collections from the late 1950s to the mid – 1960s. Ancient Bronzes of the Asian Grasslands from the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation is the first comprehensive look at these important pieces.

Note: Introductory and Historical information provided courtesy of the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation.

Statement by Dr. Sackler on the Ancient Bronzes of the Asian Grasslands:

“Great art, like science and the humanities, can never remain as the possession of one individual, creator or collector . . . great art and all culture belongs to all humankind.”

Lesson Overview

Students will learn about the Ancient Bronzes of the Asian Grasslands; about the people of the steppes; their culture and influences on other societies. Students will learn about these nomadic tribes and will explore their art; dress and decoration; tools they used for survival; their spirit world; the animal world of the Asian Grasslands; rituals; social organization and values; the making of the bronzes; Chinese influences; and Chinese ritual bronzes.

Students and teachers will consider the concepts, history and cultural issues behind the art work, and how they influence them today.

In the Shelton Studio students will be given the opportunity to complete a sculpture modeled after any of the Ancient Bronzes in the exhibit. The students will also be given the opportunity to make a sculpture which will explore their own cultures based on the ideas of survival, ritual, spiritual and animal world, social organization and values and other modern influences. The materials used for the sculptures will be varied and many.

KnifeNorthwestern China13th–11th century BCE

Students and teachers may research and engage in conversations about the complex cultures that flourished across the Asian grasslands from northern China and Mongolia into Eastern Europe during the late second and first millennia BCE. While here they will spend time in the galleries closely observing the work, discussing it, writing about it, and even sketching it. They will begin conversations about how these societies influenced and were influenced by the culture of dynastic China.

Essential Questions

Grades K-6• What is culture?• What are the influences of a culture? • What is art?• How does culture influence art?• How does art influence culture?• How does one culture influence another, such as: Chinese culture influencing the people of the

Asian grasslands.

Grades 6-12

• How is art of historical decades past different from contemporary (today’s) art? How is it similar?

• How does geography influence culture?• How does where and how we live influence art and design?• Would you describe the Steppe Dwellers as similar or dissimilar to people who live in Wyoming

and the northern Rocky Mountain West? Explain.

Art Questions to Consider

Grades K-6•What do you see? Describe the kinds of bronze pieces and sculptures you are viewing.•What shapes, forms and figures do you see?•Try to describe weight, texture and density just by looking at the pieces.•What are the subjects of these forms?•Why do you think the people of the Steppes used animal imagery in so many of the pieces?•What do you think the bronzes represent in the culture of the Asian grasslands?•Who wore these bronzes?•Why do you think some of them are so elaborately designed?

Grades 6-12•Name the different categories of objects these bronzes represent.•Discuss the rituals, social structures, animals, and spirituality that you think might be represented in these bronzes. •If you were to choose and animal to represent your family, what

Belt ornamentNorthwestern China4th century BCE

would it be and why?• How does the lifestyle of the Steppe Dwellers influence their art work, design and

craftsmanship?• Based on what you have learned about the Steppe Dwellers, would you characterize this work

as “good design?” Why or why not?

Pre-visit Activities

In order to prepare students for their museum visit and extend learning possibilities, we suggest that teachers and students consider the following activities.

• Students will read and research about the complex cultures that flourished across the Asian grasslands from northern China and Mongolia into Easter Europe during the late second and first millennia BCE.

• Students will explore the geography of the grasslands and compare it to the geography of the northern Rocky Mountain West.

• Students will read and research about how to make bronze objects for tools, art, etc.• Students will research and discuss the concept and function of design in ancient and

contemporary societies, considering such ideas as “ form follows function,” and “just because it is practical doesn’t mean it can’t be beautiful.”

Museum Activities

Part 1 – Time frame: 45 minutes in the galleries

• Students will closely observe the Ancient Bronzes of the Asian grasslands.

• They will identify shapes, forms, figures and materials.• Students will discuss what they see with museum educators.• They will explore the culture of the peoples of the Asian grasslands in

relationship to the bronze art pieces in the exhibit.• They will explore what the ancient bronzes represent in the past and

today.• Using worksheets, students will respond in writing or drawing to the

work they see by recording their observations and their own thoughts about the work on the worksheet.

• Students will answer questions on a museum worksheet.• Students will engage in discussions about their observations and

their answers and sketches with one another and with the teachers.

Part 2 – Time frame: 45 minutes (minimum) in the Shelton Studio

The following projects may be considered individually, or combined, or museum staff will work with teachers to develop specific projects which support ongoing classroom work.

• Students will learn and discuss how the ancient bronzes were created.• Students will create art work that represents their own culture today or a culture of their choice,

using such materials as clay, copper foil, and paint.• Students will design functional pieces that also serve as artwork, and will be able to discuss

the type of material they would use to make the piece.

Post-visit activities

Finial for funeral canopySouthwestern Inner Mongolia5th–4th century BCE

We have found that students achieve maximum benefit from a museum visit when time is scheduled for post-visit activities. Here are some suggestions:

• Students will discuss or write about their museum experiences, reviewing what they learned, what has special meaning for them, how they will use new information and skills.

• Students continue to research the cultures of Ancient China and the peoples of the steppes/Asian grasslands.

• Students continue to research the process and techniques of making bronze pieces.• Students create their own bronze pieces if the facilities and materials are available to them or

take a field trip to a foundry to observe the process.• Students will research and write a paper that compares and contrasts the lifestyle of

the Steppe Dwellers to contemporary inhabitants of the northern Rocky Mountain West, considering similarities in geographical location, world influences, jobs, etc.

• Students keep a record of their daily activities, and then design a practical item that reflects their lifestyle and is decorated in a way that indicates what their special interests are.

Prerequisite skills/knowledge

Museum staff will work with teachers to ensure that all projects are age and skills appropriate. At the very minimum:

• Students should have familiarity with sketching and drawing objects.• Students should be able to identify shapes, figures, forms, colors and materials.• Students should be familiar with the geography of the cultures of the Asian grasslands and

some of its history and culture.

Suggested use in the curriculum

The study of the Ancient Bronzes of the Asian Grasslands, plus the historical and cultural knowledge

Buckle plaqueSouthern Siberia2nd century BCE

gained from studying the cultures and customs of the people of the Asian grasslands will tie to multiple curricular areas including, art, history, archaeology, anthropology, social studies, writing, reading, geography, and philosophy. Museum staff will work with teachers to address specific Wyoming Teaching Standards and to align museum projects and studies with ongoing classroom curricular units.

Some recommended resources

These are just a few of the many resources available. We welcome other suggestions that teachers and students fid helpful which can be added to this list.

• UW Art Museum website• Exhibition descriptive materials (contact the museum education program for more information)• Research on the internet about the cultures of the Asian grasslands and Ancient China.• Lost-wax Casting: Old, New and Inexpensive Methods, Fred R. Sias, Jr., Woodsmere Press,

2006.• Nina’s Book of Little Things, Keith Haring, ZPRestel Publishing, 1994 (for ages 4-8)• The Design of Everyday Things, Donald A. Norman, Basic Books, 2002.

Materials to be supplied to each student

Materials for selected Shelton Studio projects are provided by the art museum.

Assessments and documentation of museum tour and studio experiences

In order to ensure that our museum tour program is meeting the needs of teachers and students, we ask that participants complete evaluation surveys. Surveys will be distributed to teachers and students, but they are also available on-line as a pdf file to be downloaded, or they may be requested via e-mail (wbredehoft@uwyo.edu).

1. Students will self-assess using a quick survey that asks them to consider their response to the gallery discussions and research, and their studio experience.

2. Teachers will assess the overall visit by completing a quick survey that asks for their observation and assessment of students’ experiences, as well as assessment of the overall process of the museum visit.

3. Museum staff and artists/teachers will record their observations and assessments.4. When studio time permits, we will ask students to briefly discuss their art work completed in

the Shelton Studio visit.5. Museum staff may take photographs of students and teachers to document the learning taking

place and the work produced during a museum visit. These are available upon written request to teachers who would like to use them as art of teaching and student portfolios.