A Tang Dynasty (618-907 A.D.) horse and rider is among 350 Chinese antiquities on display at the International Museum of the Horse in Lexington, Kentucky

It's only fitting: exhibiting Chinese horse antiquities in Kentucky

In this story: Why Kentucky? 'Terra cotta army' RELATED STORIES, SITES

LEXINGTON, Kentucky (Reuters) -- An exhibition of priceless Chinese antiquities that the world's major museums would cherish is drawing surprised visitors to a small museum in Kentucky horse country devoted to racehorses.

"Imperial China: The Art of the Horse in Chinese History," a collection of 350 artifacts fashioned of gold, bronze, jade, porcelain, and terra cotta, is on display at Lexington's International Museum of the Horse -- and nowhere else.

In China, horses were treasured for war and work, traded for silk on the famed Silk Road, used for hunting and polo and fed wine so they would dance wildly to entertain the imperial court. The Chinese believe horses possessed magical powers and would fly their owners to a pleasant afterlife.

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The treasures displayed are from the Zhou, Han and Tang dynasties, up to the fall of the last imperial court in 1911.

Visitors from around the world have been riveted by the beauty and strangeness of wood chariots equipped with brightly colored silk parasols, silver flasks that once held wine to induce the horses to dance, miniaturized cities that were buried in tombs and hoof-shaped gold coins.

The $100 million collection includes the famed Tang tricolor glazing rarely seen outside China that appears to delicately caramelize the pottery.

That the exhibition found its way to a Kentucky horse park noted for its bluegrass, white wooden fencing and the scent of hay surprised visitors and museum organizers alike.

The $100 million collection includes this jade piece from the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-220 A.D.)

"It's quite a coup for Kentucky," said Cathy Kennedy, a visitor from neighboring Indiana. "I'm surprised it's not going to major big-city museums like the Art Institute of Chicago."

"You'd expect it to go to San Francisco, at least, because of the Pacific Rim," said Kennedy's husband, Tim, a graphic artist. "How'd they land this thing?"

The museum's director, Bill Cooke, said the saga began with an e-mail he received nearly three years ago. "The week before Christmas 1997, we received e-mail from someone who'd seen our Web site."

The message from a Chinese man visiting the United States asked if the museum were interested in hosting an exhibit of reproductions of ancient Chinese scientific equipment, an incongruous offer for a small horse museum, Cooke said.

"'Well, thanks, but no thanks,' we wrote back. 'But if you ever want to do something pertaining to horses, we'd love to discuss it.' I figured we'd never hear again. Two weeks later, he e-mails us, 'There's a chance,"' he said in an interview.

A visit to China by museum officials the following March scored the coup. Cooke said that initially the Chinese officials they met with associated Kentucky only with Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) restaurants, popular in China.

"Anywhere else, people would say 'Kentucky? Oh, horses.' Here, they said, 'Chicken.' The Chinese love fried chicken. They have KFCs everywhere. The biggest KFC seats 3,000 people and it's right in Tiananmen Square," Cooke said.

He said he told his Chinese hosts: "'We want to do the most definitive exhibit on the role of the horse in Chinese history.' We were thinking a period of 300 to 400 years."

"All of a sudden, the official breaks into a grin, and through the interpreter we're told he did his master's thesis on this topic and has been waiting 20 years for someone to ask him to do this," Cooke said.

"Within 24 hours ... we went from a 300-year exhibit to 3,000 years. They were very, very generous in what they allowed us to bring over," he said.

"For a museum in a state they'd hardly heard of -- outside the context of a local restaurant -- they had extraordinary confidence in our ability to pull it off. We couldn't show them the spaces or cases because we hadn't built them yet."

The Horse Park raised funds to build special galleries. Soft ambient light makes objects of gold, bronze, jade and pastel porcelain jump out at the viewer. Chinese music plays softly and each dynasty's Chinese character is projected onto the floor.

A tiger sculpture from the Zhou Dynasty (1122 B.C.-256 B.C.)

"It's not just about the horse. This gives you a sense of the Chinese culture," said one viewer from California.

The show-stopper is 13 figures from the 7,000-strong "terra cotta army" buried with Emperor Qin Shi Huang, who also built the Great Wall. "It's eerie when you first see them," said visitor Tim Kennedy. "All the faces and horses' expressions are different -- each so individual."

"This is awesome; a part of Chinese history frozen in time," said Amanda Thompson, an artist from Kentucky.

Visitors expressed surprise at depictions of apparently liberated women during the Tang dynasty joyfully hunting, playing polo and playing instruments on horseback.

Three Chinese curators brought over the artifacts and will escort them back on four airplanes when the show closes August 31. The antiquities are not allowed to travel all together.

Meanwhile, horse lovers, art lovers and vacationers have flocked to see what cannot be viewed anywhere else. Small children were mesmerized by the horses, ceremonial swords, playful figurines, dragons and shimmering gold.

Richard Kuehl, an Iowa farmer, said the show reminded him of Western ignorance of China. "Here, you see their history, culture, religion, their values. It's magnificent."

"We were brought up to think of them as pagans, barbarians," said a visitor. "We weren't taught any of this."

The exhibition in the heart of bluegrass country made China a hot topic this summer. The University of Kentucky in Lexington offered courses in Chinese culture, local libraries featured books about China and a Sino-American trade conference in June brought Chinese businessmen to discuss opportunities.

"The Toyota (carmaking) plant's opening in Georgetown, (Kentucky) in 1986 changed the economic shape of the entire state," said a Louisville businessman. "Maybe the Chinese exhibit will do the same thing."

"We hope it's a catalyst to increase economic and cultural ties between Kentucky and China," said the Kentucky Horse Park's director, John Nicholson.

"The whole project has been magical," said Cooke, adding he still cannot believe China's national treasures flew into his Kentucky showcase.

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