Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- The State Hermitage hosted the grand opening of the “Reserve gallery of Central Asian art monuments of the II-XIX centuries from the Hermitage funds. From India to China”.

According to the press service of the Hermitage, in nine rooms on the third floor of the Winter Palace (rooms 342–334), museum visitors can get acquainted with unique cultural monuments of the East - with the culture of Sogdiana and Penjikent paintings, the culture of Khorezm, the ancient city of Khara-Khoto and the Bezeklik cave monastery, works of Tibetan painting.

The displayed monuments have never been exhibited before and are exhibited for the first time in one gallery, in contrast to the main exhibitions of the Department of the East, located on different floors and in different halls. Taken together, they testify to the commonality of cultures, reflect the complexity and diversity of the destinies of the peoples who inhabited Central and Central Asia in the first millennium A.D. before the period of its Islamization.

The chronological framework of the exhibition covers the time period from the first centuries A.D. until the 19th century.

“The second spare gallery is a new element in the hierarchy of ways of presenting the rich funds of the Hermitage along with exhibitions, branches, ‘satellites’, and open storage in Staraya Derevnya. Central and Central Asia came together, demonstrating a world of amazing unity and diversity of painting in the crosshairs of the artistic traditions of China and India.