Ethnic Costumes Exhibition (Photo provided by Liuzhou Museum)

On May 18, the 2025 International Museum Day ·Main Venue in China event officially kicked off at the Beijing Grand Canal Museum, where the results of the selection of the 22^nd(2024) “Top Ten Museum Exhibitions” in China were announced. Liuzhou Museum’s Ethnic Costumes Exhibition of the Ou-Luo Descendants, themed with “Where Clouds Nest, People Rest”, was honored with the Excellence Award in this prestigious program.

The selection, organized under the guidance of the National Cultural Heritage Administration and hosted by the Chinese Museums Association and China Cultural Relics News Agency, is one of China’s most significant cultural brand activities in the museum sector. This year, 161 exhibitions from 25 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities were submitted for consideration. After a rigorous evaluation process, Liuzhou Museum’s exhibition emerged as the sole finalist from Guangxi.

This meticulously curated original exhibition from Liuzhou Museum features traditional costumes, brocades, baby carriers, silver ornaments, and daily utensils from six ethnic groups descended from the ancient Ou-Luo people, namely Zhuang, Dong, Miao, Yao, Yi, and Buyi people. Through these artifacts, the exhibition vividly portrays the rich ethnic traditions while illustrating the cultural inheritance and development of the ethnic groups in the ancient Baiyue Area. Since the opening, the exhibition has attracted over 830,000 visitors.

Challenging conventional exhibition formats, this immersive exhibition adopts an open-display concept grounded in ethnological and anthropological perspectives. Enhanced by original ecological staging techniques and luminous artistry, it reveals the exquisite beauty of ethnic costumes within their cultural context. Interactive elements include live demonstrations of Dong embroidery and reconstructed cultural scenes such as the Dong ethnic banquet, Miao Manggao Festival, and traditional farming life. These engaging experiences make visitors closely appreciate the beauty of the costumes while deepening their understanding of China’s ethnic cultural heritage, facilitating the inheritance and innovation of traditional culture through a dialogue between “tradition” and “modernity”.