展示空間和敘述的政治---美國美術館裡的中國藝術

Abstract

There has been a lot of attention paid to Chinese art exhibitions in the United States and Europe, but these have mostly focused on the special loan or traveling exhibitions from China and Taiwan. Most studies done on Chinese art collections in American museums have dealt with their histories. It can be argued, however, that the manner in which Chinese art works are presented as part of a museum’s permanent displays have more enduring impact on the public’s ideas about Chinese art than temporary traveling special exhibitions. In his recent book Museum Skepticism: A History of the Display of Art in Public Galleries (2006), David Carrier posed the question of why many museums display Chinese art (or other nonwestern art) in the basement or lower levels of museums. As he contemplates philosophically on our ideas of world art history, Carrier also asked the question of why European art is presented in a continuous narrative in museums and world art history texts. On the other hand Chinese art and art of the non-western ’other’are not. Instead, they are often presented according to the function or materials of the art works. Moreover, Chinese art are displayed (or discussed) after the Graeco-Roman classical period and before medieval Europe along with Islamic art, as in E.H. Gombrich’s Story of Art. Carrier expounds on this phenomena with a philosophical explication of the impact of Hegelian historiography on our understanding of art. I planned to pursue this further, with an emphasis on how and why this concept was manifested in museum displays of Chinese art. I hope to show the changes that have happened in museums by exploring the different aspects of collecting and long-term permanent exhibitions of Chinese art in American museums.