The First Emperor: China's Terracotta Army, at the British Museum in London, which featured a 360-degree projection system designed and installed by systems integrator Sysco, has won the prestigious Museums & Heritage 2008 Award for Temporary or Touring Exhibition.

The exhibition ran from September 2007 to April 2008, becoming the British Museum’s most successful temporary exhibition for 30 years, with over 850,000 visitors. It featured the largest group of important objects relating to the First Emperor ever to be loaned abroad by the Museum of the Terracotta Army and the Cultural Relics Bureau of Shaanxi Province in Xi’an, China. It was housed in the Reading Room at the heart of the Museum, which was temporarily converted by exhibition designers Metaphor in conjunction with the British Museum design team.

In a technological “first” for the UK, Sysco worked with the British Museum to develop an exhibition projection solution that would be capable of being reconfigured for use in different types and designs of temporary exhibitions, thus maximizing the Museum’s investment in technology.

For First Emperor, Sysco specified an array of 10 Barco HD Icon H250 projectors, which were arranged to project onto five screens in pairs around the Reading Room’s circumference. 11 Dataton Watchout PC packages provided projection control and edged-blending, enabling a seamless 360-degree projection to be achieved around the central exhibits of the Terracotta Army itself and other relics.

The system is currently being reconfigured to feature once again, in a new layout, for the Museum’s second major temporary exhibition, Hadrian: Empire and Conflict, which will open to the public on July 24, 2008.