HANGZHOU, China, June 18, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- China National Silk Museum in Hangzhou officially launched the 2021 Silk Road Week on the morning of June 18, themed Cultural Diversity and Sustainable Development, featuring a programme filled with activities, including the Annual Report of Cultural Heritage on the Silk Roads 2020, the Museum Directors' Forum, Curators' forum: Silk Roads and Digital Curation, Special Annual Conference of the Chinese Association of Dunhuang and Turfan Studies, among others.

Three physical exhibitions will also be open to the public, namely, Creation from Creature: Plants and Animals on the Silk Roads, Silk Roads on Silk Scarves, and Silk Roads International Photography Exhibition.

Meanwhile, the first fully online 3D exhibition is showing entitled, Gathering in the Galaxy: Great Treasures from the Silk Roads, containing 79 artifacts from 47 museums all over the world. Among them are national-level precious treasures, murals that require complex transportation, and fragile ceramics and porcelains, all "gathering remotely" online. Taking a cue from the geographical routes, the "Silk Roads Map" is the prologue and the exhibition is divided into four chapters: Steppe Silk Road, Silk Road of the Desert Oasis, Maritime Silk Road, and the Buddhist Silk Road.

Initiated by the China National Silk Museum, the Silk Road Online Museum (SROM) project partners with museums worldwide and compiles a platform with four distinctive categories: Digital Collection, Digital Exhibition, Digital Knowledge, and Online-Curating. Over 40 museums from 18 countries have joined the project including, the British Museum, the State Historical Museum in Russia, the Hirayama Ikuo Silk Road Museum in Japan, the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki in Greece, and the National Museum of Antiquities in Tajikistan. The project facilitates cooperation and mutual learning and provides an online research and curating platform for museum and university education.

The first edition of Silk Road Week was held successfully in Hangzhou in June 2020, attracting over 200 international museums and institutions to engage in various online and offline events. As an international cultural exchange activity, Silk Road Week aims to mark the anniversary for the day the Silk Road – from Chang'an to the Tianshan Corridor – was listed on the UNESCO World Heritage List on June 22, 2014.

The Silk Road Online Museum and exhibition is now officially open to the public: (https://iidos.cn/museum).