Chinese antiquities in 'Silk Road' exhibit never approved for Penn exhibit

The Chinese antiquities at the heart of the Penn Museum's beleaguered and depleted "Secrets of the Silk Road" exhibition were never approved for display in Philadelphia, a Chinese Embassy spokesman said Tuesday, almost a week after the museum announced the pieces had been stripped from the show.

The Chinese spokesman in Washington, Wang Baodong, blamed poor planning.

"The exhibition has been on display in both California and Houston," Wang said. "For such a big exhibition, you've got to have good planning in the first place. So, again, Philadelphia was not a planned stop. That's why I think there's been this confusion."

In fact, however, Philadelphia had been touted publicly as the only East Coast stop on the tour for more than a year. And a story appeared in China Daily Online in March 2010 reporting that the show and artifacts would travel to Houston and Philadelphia after appearing at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, Calif.

The show, which had featured two mummies and more than 100 artifacts from western China, drew substantial numbers of visitors at its first two stops, the Bowers Museum of Art and the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

But when the show closed in Houston last month and artifacts were shipped here, Chinese authorities notified the Penn Museum that they were not to be unpacked and could not be displayed.

The show instead opened Saturday with mummy mock-ups and quickly cobbled-together cardboard artifacts - not exactly what the museum had in mind for its first timed-ticket blockbuster-style show.

Museum director Richard Hodges declined to comment Tuesday.

Victor H. Mair, a consultant on the exhibition and professor of Chinese literature at the University of Pennsylvania, has attributed the surprise Chinese action to a "bureaucratic" lapse.

Other Penn sources have said that U.S. diplomatic personnel in Beijing are in discussions with Chinese authorities to obtain required approvals for the release of artifacts. If successful, the hope is to replace the faux mummies and artifacts with the real ones as soon as possible.

Wang confirmed that "there is some discussion" in Beijing about the show.

University sources, who spoke anonymously because Penn officials have told staff members and faculty not to discuss the matter, said that regional authorities in western China approved Philadelphia as a venue, but that necessary review and approval from Beijing never happened. They could not explain why.

Peter C. Keller, director of the Bowers Museum, which organized the traveling exhibition, did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

Officials at the Houston Museum of Natural Science said responsibility for obtaining necessary Chinese approvals was jointly held. "It's up to the individual museum to work with the host museum [Bowers] and [the Chinese] government" to obtain those approvals, a Houston museum administrator said.

Wang attributed some of the Penn Museum's problem to "miscomunication," but he would not elaborate, adding: "We don't think it's advisable to speculate too much or to read into it too much."

The exhibit has been "on display in California," he continued. "It's been on display in Houston. Those two museums were in the first place agreed on, and after the display of the exhibition in those two cities, it was supposed to be returned."