cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/8585977
The museum row in 2020 focused on the project’s collaboration with the Inner Mongolia Museum in Hohhot, China. Chinese authorities demanded that certain words, including “Genghis Khan”, “empire” and “Mongol”, be taken out of the French show.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
But now the Chateau des ducs de Bretagne history museum in Nantes has finally opened its blockbuster exhibition on Genghis Khan and the Mongol empire, with large crowds queueing to see hundreds of objects that have never been shown in Europe, some dug up by archaeologists only three years ago.
Crucially, the exhibition seeks to look beyond the cinematic cliches of bloodthirsty warriors to the wider-ranging and geopolitically relevant lessons of the expansive Mongol empire through the 13th and 14th centuries, from climate change to pandemics, cartography and science.
The Nantes museum pulled the plug and refused the demands, saying Chinese authorities wanted “elements of biased rewriting of Mongol culture in favour of a new national narrative”.
The new show, which features more than 400 pieces including helmets, fabrics, ceramics and paper money, has instead gone ahead in collaboration with museums in Mongolia, the landlocked country between Russia and China.
Bertrand Guillet, the director of the Chateau des ducs de Bretagne and Nantes history museum, and general curator of the show, said: “What seemed important when we launched this project six years ago was to go beyond the figure of Genghis Kahn, who is known in slightly vulgar terms as a bloody tyrant.
“The Mongol empire was gigantic and there are echoes of its political and territorial questions today in the contemporary world: the relationship of China and Russia, what happens in Iran, in central Europe.”
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