In the past, if a person wanted to see the national treasures of a country, one had to go there in person. Therefore, very few people were able to enjoy some of history's most important and interesting artifacts  . This has changed with an increase in the number of traveling museum exhibitions. King Tutankhamen Artifacts A traveling exhibition of artifacts from the tomb of King Tutankhamen, popularly known as "King Tut", toured the United States from November 1976 to April 1979. The 55 objects were shown in six cities and were seen by around eight million museum-goers. The second touring exhibit was started in 2007, this time with 130 artifacts and stops in London and three different American cities. However some objects, like the king's golden face mask, are too valuable or too delicate to be transported long distances, so "replicas" (exact copies of something) are on show. Japanese Color Woodblock Prints The Art Museum at University of Virginia, in Charlottesville, Virginia, has an extraordinary collection of Japanese color woodblock prints  . These prints document the period from about 1850 to 1900, a time when Japan was opening itself to Western influences. Before this point, Japan was a closed society that had little communication with the world outside of its borders. These works of art beautifully show the feeling of change and the trend toward modernization. The museum has put together a traveling exhibition of 60 of these prints, which can be borrowed and exhibited worldwide for periods of eight weeks or more. Face-to-face with "Lucy" One of the world's most famous archaeological   finds in history are the 3.2 million-year-old bones of a 106-centimeter-tall female found in the Ethiopian desert in 1974. Lucy, a name given to her by the discovery team, is a "hominid", or a creature that scientists believe is the earliest ancestor of modern human beings. Rarely is an artifact this valuable allowed to travel widely, but Lucy has been taken to several museums in the U.S. while a detailed replica remains at the Ethiopian Natural History Museum. What do the Japanese woodblock prints show about the society from 1850 to 1900?
Japan had little communication with other countries. The whole country refused changes in the society. Japan was opening itself up to Western ideas. Japan achieved modernization.