London autumn cultural season to highlight Ming Dynasty exhibition

London's most well-known cultural institutions gathered together Thursday to promote the metropolis' autumn cultural season, which will highlight an exhibition about China's Ming Dynasty.

The exhibition -- Ming: 50 years that changed China -- focuses on 1400-1450, a key period in the dynasty's early years and will be held from Sept. 18, 2014 to Jan. 5, 2015 at the British Museum in London.

Between 1400 and 1450, China was a global superpower run by one family -- the Ming dynasty, which established Beijing as the capital and built the Forbidden City, according to a statement of the British Museum.

During this period, Ming China was thoroughly connected with the outside world. Chinese artists absorbed many fascinating influences and created some of the most beautiful objects and paintings ever made.

The exhibition will feature a range of these spectacular objects - including exquisite porcelain, gold, jewelry, furniture, paintings, sculptures and textiles - from museums across China and the rest of the world. Many of them have only been very recently discovered and have never been seen outside China.

At the launch event of the cultural season, Chinese Ambassador to Britain Liu Xiaoming said the exhibition "is the most valuable way to introduce Chinese culture to the public across the Britain."

"This exhibition will also play a big role and lay a good foundation for the Year of China-UK Cultural Exchange in 2015...I wish the London autumn cultural season a great success and I look forward to many more excellent cultural events in London," Liu said.

Besides the Ming dynasty exhibition, the stellar line-up of shows and exhibitions to take place in the upcoming autumn includes exhibitions of English Romantic landscape painter Joseph Mallord William Turner's works and German painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer's works as well as a Sherlock Holmes exhibition.

The autumn cultural season is expected to attract more than 2 million visitors.