This exhibit was organized as part of Silk Road Seattle, a collaborative public education project exploring cultural interaction across Eurasia from the first century BCE to the sixteenth century CE. Silk Road Seattle is sponsored by the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington. Images of art objects are provided through the kind cooperation of museums and photographers around the world.

The primary goal of the exhibit is to employ the Internet in an innovative way to enable the interested public anywhere in the world to experience the art of the Silk Road, and to promote such future collaborations across the boundaries of museum collections. By introducing a wide variety of art from multiple locations, we hope to encourage viewers to visit the museums where the objects are housed, since art must, in the first instance, be viewed directly.

We have selected the objects with three considerations in mind. The first is that the material should complement the Silk Road Seattle lecture series and serve as a teaching and learning resource for educators and their students. The second is to highlight a number of cultures and artistic issues such as the nomadic peoples of Central and East Asia, which are often neglected in discussions of the art of the Silk Road. Finally, the exhibition provides us with a chance to examine high quality art that has not always been included in the various fine Silk Road publications and exhibitions organized up to this point.

We hope you enjoy the exhibit, and encourage you to return often.