The Silk Road: Connecting Cultures, Creating Trust
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©2002 Kimberly Freeman The 2002 Smithsonian Folklife Festival The Silk Road: Connecting Cultures, Creating Trust celebrated the living traditional arts of peoples of Silk Road lands. The ancient Silk Road was a vast network of trade routes whose flow of ideas, culture, music and art crossed the mountains and deserts of Central Asia to connect East Asia and the Mediterranean. The Festival presented artists whose stories and history link to the cultural mosaic of the Silk Road, an enduring symbol of cultural discovery and exchange. In a world of increasing awareness and interdependence, The Silk Road: Connecting Cultures, Creating Trust exhibited ways in which the many cultures of Eurasia were brought closer together through a creative commercial and cultural exchange that continues in the lands of the Silk Road and beyond.

Produced by the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage in partnership with the Silk Road Project, Inc. and with the site design and production collaboration of Rajeev Sethi Scenographers and the Asian Heritage Foundation, Co-sponsored by the National Park Service.

Program Book (articles on the Silk Road and the Festival)
About the Smithsonian Folklife Festival (visitor information, children's activities)
Map (PDF) of the Festival site
Passport (PDF) for kids

  
  Videos: Photo Galleries:  
  Opening Ceremony
Beijing Opera
Closing Ceremony 		Afghan Boulanee
Armenian Easter Bread
Asian Martial Arts
Fashion
Painted Truck		  
 



The 2002 Festival has been made possible through the following generous sponsors and donors to the Silk Road Project, Inc.:

Lead Funder and Key Creative Partner: The Aga Khan Trust for Culture
Global Corporate Partners: Ford Motor Company & Siemens
Founding Supporter: Sony Classical
Major Funding by: National Endowment for the Arts

and by the following supporters of the Smithsonian Institution:
Lead Donor: ExxonMobil

In-kind supporters include Turkish Airlines, Motorola / Nextel, GoPed, Fresh Fields/Whole Foods Market and APL.