Genghis Khan exhibit opens Friday at Reagan Library in Simi Valley

Ventura

Friday is the start of the Mongolian New Year, a fitting day for the world’s most extensive Genghis Khan exhibit to open at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library & Museum in Simi Valley.

The goal of the exhibit is to make the public aware of another side of Khan, the brutal conqueror who dominated three times more land in his lifetime — 1162-1227 — than either Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great, said library spokeswoman Melissa Giller.

“Khan was also a civilizer and a lawmaker and a democratizer, and that’s what we’re trying to show,” she said Thursday as the finishing touches were being put on the exhibit, which will run through Aug. 19.

Visitors will learn that Khan not only created the nation of Mongolia and its written language, but his lineage established the modern borders of China, India, Iran and Korea and opened trade routes that united East and West, Giller said.

Khan’s empire brought such innovations to the West as Mongolian-style democracy, pants, the pony express, passports, cannons, paper money, skis, violins, baklava, noodles, lemons and tea, said the exhibit’s creator, Don Lessem.

“He is responsible for so many things that we didn’t realize,” said Lessem, calling Khan “perhaps the greatest civilizer in the history of the Earth.”

Not that the exhibit whitewashes Khan’s ruthless, violent side. It includes a formidable array of swords, bows, arrows, saddles and armor.

In all, the exhibit features more than 200 objects, including costumes, jewels, ornaments, instruments and numerous other relics and elaborate artifacts from 13th-century Mongolia.

Visitors will experience the exhibit through the eyes of a Mongolian resident, receiving a civilian identity card at the beginning of their tour. As a warrior or a spy or a princess, they will follow their character’s life throughout the rise of the great Mongol Empire.

Highlights of the exhibit include:

The re-creation of Karakorum, a walled city that became the capital of the Mongolian Empire after Genghis Khan’s son inherited the kingdom.
The re-creation of the sumptuous Chinese palace of Xanadu, the center of the empire of Khan’s grandson, Kublai, who united China for the first time.
An exploration of the vital trade route along the Silk Road, which enabled the exchange of both goods and ideas between cultures.
Tracing Khan’s influence in images of modern Mongolian life.
Live performances three times a day by Mongolian singers, dancers and musicians.

The exhibit grew out of Philadelphia-based Lessem’s interest in a very different topic — dinosaurs.

“I’m a dinosaur explorer, and I first went to Mongolia about 30 years ago because Mongolia is full of dinosaur” fossils, he said. “And when I got there, I saw how Genghis Khan is somewhere between Abraham Lincoln and God to them, and that didn’t gibe at all with what I had heard about this barbarian.”

So, Lessem decided to research and tell Khan’s full story.

“It took me about nine years to gather together all these artifacts,” he said. “This is the largest collection of objects from his time and place that has ever been put together anywhere in the world.”

It features loans by private collectors from Mongolia, Azerbaijan and the United States.

“I went to Mongolia to look for fossils and discovered the truth about Genghis Khan, a civilizing genius,” Lessem said. “It’s a great story best told in a major exhibition.”

The exhibit has been displayed at museums around the U.S. and in Canada and Singapore, and has been seen by more than 1 million people, he said.

The Reagan Library, 40 Presidential Drive in Simi Valley, is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day except Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day.

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Since large crowds are expected for the Khan exhibit, pre-purchased timed-entry tickets are recommended, Giller said. They can be bought online at www.reaganlibrary.com/tickets. For more information, call 800-410-8354 or visit www.reaganlibrary.com/khan.