The Getty Conservation Institute and the State Bureau of Cultural Relics are preserving the Mogao and Yungang Grottoes, two ancient Buddhist sites along the Silk Road in northern China. Buddhist monks cut hundreds of rock temples into the sandstone face of the Tian Shan range near the Dunhuang City from 366 to 1300 A.D. Artists covered these wall shrines, known as the Mogao Grottoes, with paintings of sutras, Buddhas and bodhisattvas or Buddhas-to-be. At Yungang, masons carved nearly 50 temples into a thousand-meter-long sandstone cliff from 460 to 524 A.D.

Two thousand clay figures are found within the Mogao Grottoes. Local artists created this statue of the Great Buddha during the Tang Dynasty (618-906 A.D.).
1 of 5