A 3,000-year-old owl-shaped Chinese bronze vessel is back on display at the Minneapolis Institute of Art after repair work following a 2023 accident.
Special lighting used for an exhibition in 2023 required that the owl be put out in the open on a stand, and a visitor accidentally knocked it over, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune.
The museum said Thursday that its conservation team used radiographs to reveal areas where the vessel had been previously restored in the 1940s following its initial excavation, and then used a combination of soldering and adhesives to fix the owl.
Some missing elements of the piece, the museum explains on its website, had to be cast in new bronze before being soldered on.
The museum said that the owl vessel, which went back on display Thursday, “regained its original visual integrity, with the previous damage barely detectable.”
While the repair work was finished months after the accident, the owl was not put back on display immediately because 80 pieces from the museum’s collection of bronze works were on tour, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune.
The owl is also known as the Pillsbury Owl; it was first bequeathed to the museum in 1950 by Pillsbury Company heir Alfred Pillsbury. The owl vessel was made for ritual use during the later stage of China’s Shang dynasty, which lasted from 1600 B.C. to 1046 B.C.
“Seeing the bronze owl restored and returned to public view is deeply meaningful for our team. The conservation process allowed us to gain new insight into how the vessel was cast more than 3,000 years ago during the late Shang dynasty, as well as into the extensive restoration it underwent in the 1940s,” said Liu Yang, the curator of Chinese art and chair of Asian art at the museum.
