“The Art of Life: Multimedia Exhibition of Mawangdui” Wins the 2025 iF Design Award

The immersive digital exhibition, The Art of Life: Multimedia Exhibition of Mawangdui Han Culture (hereafter referred to as The Art of Life), jointly developed by Hunan Museum, Digital Library of China Co., Ltd, and Harvard FAS CAMLab under the leadership of Professor Eugene Y. Wang, has been honored with the prestigious 2025 German iF Design Award. Selected from over 11,000 entries across 66 countries and regions, the exhibition earned acclaim for its outstanding and innovative design and profound cultural impact.

Renowned as one of the world’s top three design awards alongside the Red Dot Award and the International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA), the iF Design Award evaluates all entries through its rigorous and independent criteria including idea, form, functionality, differentiation, and sustainability. The Art of Life stood out in the competitive Cultural Exhibitions category by pioneering a “digital theater” approach to heritage interpretation. The award recognizes not only the exhibition’s aesthetic excellence but also its innovative contributions to cultural communication and education.

Collaborating with Digital Library of China Co., Ltd and Harvard FAS CAMLab under the leadership of Professor Eugene Y. Wang, Hunan Museum synthesizes the innovative ideas in cutting-edge academic research and digital art, and the newest development in multimedia technology for three years, to present the cultural legacy of Mawangdui in this well-orchestrated exhibition, The Art of Life. Through the integration of cutting-edge technology and in-depth cultural narratives, and through the international interdisciplinary cooperation, dialogues and artistic creation, the exhibition has revitalized Chinese cultural heritage and won wide acclaim on the international stage. As one of the digital exhibitions with the largest individual investment in the cultural relics and museum field at present in China, the project exemplifies Hunan Province’s commitment to integrating culture with technology according to the directives of the CPC Central Committee, setting a new paradigm for digital exhibitions in China’s cultural relics and museum field. It contributes to the the global appeal of Mawangdui Culture, a 2,000-year-old Western Han Dynasty archaeological treasure, and to the new quality productive forces of China.

Since its debut on June 8, 2024 at Hunan Museum, the exhibition has drawn over 520,000 visitors and will run until May 18, 2025.