Patience is a virtue that visitors to
Shanghai Museum must desperately be in possession of. The recent opening of “A History
of the World in 100 Objects from the British Museum” has proved to be
extremely popular, forcing Shanghai Museum to set a daily quota of 8,000
visitors.
But the quota usually fills up few hours after the opening.
To streamline visitors, Shanghai Museum has now set up a special entrance for those visiting the British Museum exhibition at the
southern gate. For other exhibits, people have to use the northern
entrance.
Despite that, the queues haven’t shortened as visitors are forced to wait in the heat and brave the large crowd all the way up to the third
floor — the site of the exhibition. The museum allows only 250 visitors
at a time inside the hall.
A WeChat reservation option was tried out for the first time but the booking site collapsed right on the first day.
“This exhibition is more academic,” says Zhan Hao, a local art critic. “I suggest that visitors prepare ahead of the trip by reading
some books or materials related to the 100 objects on display here.
Otherwise they will just glance through these things hurriedly.”
Zhan also points out that the exhibition was not appropriate for children.
Inspired by the highly acclaimed 2010 radio series and book, which was produced in partnership with BBC and Penguin Book, this exhibition
tells one version of an extraordinary story — the history of the world.
Using 100 key objects from British Museum’s encyclopedic collection, the exhibition highlights the remarkable stories that are revealed
through the most humble objects, such as a tiny stone seal that led to
the rediscovery of a lost civilization, and fragments of pottery
discarded on a beach in Africa that point to the vast distances
travelled by early traders across the Indian Ocean.
“All these objects come together to tell a global story that spans continents and millennia,” says Belinda Crerar, curator of the
exhibition.
