First days of March don’t yet look like a spring revival. The temperature is still very much winter-like, and the skies today are gloomy and cloudy. Yet, spring is already on its’ way, and maybe just for this time, better than concentrating on the present, we should look a little bit forward, to the end of March, when the days should be warmer and one very special event should come to Sendai. This month’s Sendai Museum Guide is dedicated to the Lascaux exhibition in Tohoku History Museum.
What is so special about the Lascaux cave in France? The paintings. Multiple paintings of animals, humans figures and some abstractions, incredibly vivid and skilfull, present us an insight to a world that our history has forgotten. More than 20,000 years ago, there were people living on our Earth, who were hunting, observing nature, performing rituals, raising children and sometimes, for some unknown reason, were drawing these adorable pictures. We don’t know much about them. But since 1940, when the Lascaux cave was found, we at least know that the people who lived 20,000 years ago could create such breath-taking art.
The cave was open for public, but soon it became clear that the paintings are being damaged by the heat and carbon dioxide, produced by thousands and thousands of visitors, and the cave was closed. But the copies of the drawings can be seen even today in the LASCAUX INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION which is visiting our town very soon.
The exhibition features the copies of famous drawings, these unique relics of the Upper Paleolithic age, but apart from a possibility to discover the world view of our ancestors who lived 20,000 years ago, thanks to the elaborate design of the exhibition, you have a chance to feel like a real researcher, entering the actual cave. The interior of the cave is said to be recreated in a striking similarity. The exhibition also features explanation on how the pictures were created, what instruments and colors were used by the painters, introduction of the painters themselves (as far as we know about them), as well as a detailed story about the preservation of the paintings.
A quest to the mysterious world of Lascaux cave makes us a little bit closer to the people who lived so many years ago that it is hard to imagine. And although we don’t know their names and the languages they spoke, we can imagine that every year they were waiting for spring, patiently and eagerly, just like us. And maybe, just like us, they admired the beauty of the world waking up for the new beginning of the cycle.
The exhibition is on from 2017.03.25 until 5.28
Place: Tohoku History Museum
Opening hours: 9：30～17：00 (entrance till 16:30)
Closed: Every Monday (except 5.01)