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This conference was coorganized by the Getty Conservation Institute,
China's State Administration for Cultural Heritage, and the Dunhuang
Academy. The conference grew out of work that the three organizations
had been conducting collaboratively on the conservation of the Mogao
grottoes, a World Heritage Site.
Situated near the oasis town of Dunhuang at the edge of the Gobi
Desert in Gansu province, 1,770 kilometers (1,100 miles) west of
Beijing, the Mogao grottoes constitute one of the most significant
sites of Buddhist art in the world. In the age of the Silk Road,
Dunhuang was a major crossroads for the caravan routes that skirted
the northern and southern parameters of the desolate Takla Makan
Desert to the west. For a thousand years, beginning in the 4th century,
Chinese Buddhists carved an extensive series of grottoes along the
site's 1.6 kilometers (1 mile) of cliff face. Today there remain
more than 490 temples containing wall paintings covering 45,000
square meters (484,200 square feet), making Mogao the largest single
collection of Buddhist mural art in China.
The purpose of the conference at Mogao was to exchange ideas, experiences,
methods, techniques, and research findings on the conservation and
management of grotto sites, particularly Buddhist sites along the
Silk Road. The carved rock grotto caves of China—as well as India,
Korea, Japan, and southeast Asia—constitute an important category
of cultural sites whose similar attributes derive from shared historical
and cultural traditions. The dry climate of the region has preserved
many cultural monuments that require the attention of the conservation
community if they are to survive modern development.
Topics addressed in the conference included the impact of visitors
on the microenvironment of caves, nondestructive techniques for
analyzing local stone and pigment, methods of protecting caves from
ongoing environmental damage, research on ancient materials and
techniques, and analyses of stone sculpture. The conference marked
the first time that scholars and scientists from the West and China
had convened at a heritage site in China for the common purpose
of providing information, exchanging ideas, and devising mechanisms
to save grotto sites. A post-conference tour visited Silk Road sites
between Dunhuang and Ur'mqi, Xinjiang province.
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