The exhibition Splendors of the Oases of Uzbekistan was held at the Louvre from November 23, 2022 to March 6, 2023, curated by Yannick Lintz and Rocco Rante, with a major contribution from the Collège de France. Frantz Grenet (chairman of the scientific committee), François Déroche and several of their collaborators contributed significantly to the choice of objects and the catalog.
A total of 130 works were on display, mainly on loan from Uzbekistan, but also from other French and foreign museums. Some of the most spectacular pieces (the "Painting of the Ambassadors" from Samarkand, 660 AD; the recently discovered 6th-century wooden door from the Kafir-kala palace, depicting the entire civic assembly of Samarkand; the Koran leaflets from Katta-Langar) had never before left the country.
This exhibition, which has welcomed 300,000 visitors, and its catalog, are now the benchmark for seventeen centuries of brilliant history, during which Uzbekistan has never ceased to be a crossroads of civilizations at the heart of the Silk Roads.
The exhibition was accompanied by an international symposium co-organized at the Collège de France and the Louvre on January 16 and 17, 2023.
