Museums, Chinese and Western: How Did They Come to be So Different

 

 

Walk into most art museums in Europe and America and you will see items from primitive to contemporary, Western to African to Asian, from paintings to teacups, medieval armor to fashionable dresses, and the occasional motorcycle display. Not so in Chinese art museums, most of them of recent vintage, with a far narrower range of materials almost all of which is Chinese. Looked at historically, this difference doesn’t seem to have been inevitable or even predictable, nor is it always sure to stay this way. But for now, the differences are there and they are striking. This talk is intended to cast light on this intriguing contrast and what it tells us about Chinese thought and values.

 

Jerome Silbergeld is the P. Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Professor of Chinese Art History at Princeton University and director of Princeton’s Tang Center for East Asian Art. He has published more than seventy books, catalogues, articles, and book chapters on topics in traditional and contemporary Chinese painting, architecture and gardens, cinema and photography.

 

Presented by the UO Confucius Institute for Global China Studies and cosponsored by the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, CAPS National Resource Center for East Asian Studies, Department of Art History, Asian Studies Program and The Oregon Humanities Center’s Endowment for Public Outreach in the Arts, Sciences and Humanities.