Tibet Museum
The Tibet Museum is located in the southeast corner of the Norbu Lingka Park, Lhasa City. Covering an area of 53,959 square meters, the museum houses numerous collections of Buddhist sculptures, paintings, jade wares, and ritual objects. Currently, the museum only shows around 1,000 exhibits to the public. They are classified into 4 sections (categories) including pre-history culture, indivisible history, culture and arts, and people's customs. The Tibet Museum is a good palace to explore the real facts about Tibetan history, politics, religions, cultural arts, and customs.
Prehistory
This section features items ranging in age from 50,000 to 3,000 years. Many of the items such as stone tools, pottery, bone objects and metal objects were unearthed at the Karuo and Qugong sites, representative of the Neolithic culture of the Tibetan plateau and the origins of the Tibetan people. There is also a room showing the variety of flora found in Tibet as well as several geological samples.
Political History
This section of the museum focuses on the different dynastic periods of Tibetan history. The museum has many seals, books, official documents and gifts from Emperors, offering an insight into the political exchanges between the Han Dynasty officials and the Tibetan leaders and the relationship between the Chinese central government and the Tibetan regional garpons. Tourists can see the original copy of the 17-point agreement signed in 1951 marking Tibet's re-unification with China, take an audio tour and see the Golden Urn that China used to select a disputed Panchen Lama.
Cultural Arts
This section is divided into 8 main areas exploring Tibetan culture. These include Tibetan-script books, documents and scrolls, the arts of Tibetan theatre, Tibetan musical instruments, Tibetan medicine, Tibetan astronomy and calendar reckoning (including charts), Tibetan sculpture, and thangka painting and arts. Altogether, these depict an artistic and cultural overview of the last thousand years of Tibetan arts and thoroughly display the once-glorious peaks of Tibetan arts and culture. The exhibited artifacts are treasures of the Tibetan Autonomous Region Cultural Relics Protection Organization that was set up after the establishment of the PRC. Some of these treasures are unique and being shown to the world for the first time; they are historical evidence of the history of Tibetan civilization.
People's Culture
This section of the exhibition is divided into 6 main areas, including explorations in the Tibetan people's costumes and style of dress, every day tools and utensils, arts and handicrafts, and ways of communication.
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