Content area
Full text
ARTS: Museum Featuring Priceless Works from China To Open in Shakopee.
A Chinese delegation from Shaanxi Province recently presented a Minnesota art collector and historian with a soldier from China's greatest national treasure, the underground terracotta brigade that protects the tomb of the first self-proclaimed emperor, Qin Shihuang.
The soldier was given to Donald Trent, owner of Camelot Galleries and the Qin Terracotta Museum of Chinese Soldiers, located in Shakopee, Minnesota. Trent said the soldier, a second lieutenant, is one of 7,500 life-size clay military personnel that were discovered by a peasant in 1974 and believed to be 2,200 years old. Trent's Museum of Qin Terracotta Soldiers is the only one in the United States to have an actual Qin tomb soldier in its possession. The galleries and museum, located off of Highway 13 and Canterbury Road, is scheduled to open Dec. 15.
"No one believes it," Trent said in an interview with Asian Pages. A month ago, he had a dismal turnout after contacting local reporters to cover the ceremony at Camelot Galleries, where he received the figure from Liu Fusheng, director of the Exhibition Department of the Qin Shihuang Terracotta Warriors and Horses Museum and a member of the Xi'an Fine Arts Research Academy. Also presenting the soldier to Trent were four internationally-known Chinese artists and members of the Academy: Yang Yang, Liu Wen-xi, Chen Bei-xin, and Wang Chong-ren. "I called the Shakopee City Council members to invite them and they all had other plans," Trent said with disappointment. "It [the soldier] came right out of the ground, just before it was sent here. Five certificates were needed to get it out of China.
"There are lots of soldiers out there, but no one has anything like what I have, and that is guaranteed," Trent said. "People in Los Angeles and New York know what I've got and wonder why I'm in Shakopee, Minnesota. I tell them because I don't want to give up bass fishing," Trent said jokingly.
Minnesotans are skeptical for good reason. Art collectors and museum officials worldwide have offered to pay millions of dollars for a single tomb soldiers, but Chinese government officials have been reluctant. After the archaeological wonder was discovered two decades ago, it was quickly...