Chinas Intrepid Muse

Author : Marzia Varutti
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer Ltd
ISBN 13 : 1843838885
Total Pages : 206 pages
Book Rating : 4.83/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Museums in China written by Marzia Varutti and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 2014 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of museums in China, surveying their development from the nineteenth century, and looking in particular at their incredible recent proliferation. Museums in China have undergone tremendous transformations since they first appeared in the country in the late nineteenth century. Futuristic, state-of-the-art museums have today become symbols of China's global cultural, economic and technological prominence, and over the last two decades, the number of Chinese museums has increased at an unprecedented rate, with China set to become the country with the highest number of museums in the world. But why have museums become so important? This book, based on extensive research in a number of the museums themselves, examines recent changes in their display methods, narratives, actors and architectural style. It also considers their representations of Chinese national identity, millenarian history and extraordinary cultural diversity. Through an analysis of the changes affecting not only what we observe through museums, but also the very medium of observation (i.e. museums themselves), this book provides a unique, original and timely exploration of the ongoing changes affecting Chinese society, and an evaluation of their consequences. Dr Marzia Varutti is apost-doctoral fellow at the Centre for Museum Studies, Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo.

Author : Jeannette Shambaugh Elliot
Publisher : University of Washington Press
ISBN 13 : 9780295801384
Total Pages : 204 pages
Book Rating : 4.87/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Odyssey of China's Imperial Art Treasures written by Jeannette Shambaugh Elliot and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2015-07-16 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Odyssey of China's Imperial Art Treasures traces the three-thousand-year history of the emperor's imperial collection, from the Bronze Age to the present. The tortuous story of these treasures involves a succession of dynasties, invasion and conquest, and civil war, resulting in valiant attempts to rescue and preserve the collection. Throughout history, different Chinese regimes used the imperial collection to bolster their own political legitimacy, domestically and internationally. The narrative follows the gradual formation of the Peking Palace Museum in 1925, then its hasty fragmentation as large parts of the collection were moved perilously over long distances to escape wartime destruction, and finally its formal division into what are today two Palace Museums-one in Beijing, the other in Taipei. Enlivened by the personalities of those who cared for the collection, this textured account of the imperial treasures highlights magnificent artworks and their arduous transit through politics, war, and diplomatic reconciliations. Over the years, control of the collections has been fiercely contested, from early dynasties through Mongol and Japanese invaders to Nationalist and Communist rivals- a saga that continues today. This first book-length investigation of the imperial collections will be of great interest to China scholars, historians, and Chinese art specialists. Its tales of palace intrigue will fascinate a wide variety of readers.

Author : Xianyao Li
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 0521186900
Total Pages : 219 pages
Book Rating : 4.02/5 ( download)

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Download or read book China's Museums written by Xianyao Li and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-03 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an illustrated guide to China's numerous museums, and will inspire all those with interests in Chinese history.

Author : Da Kong
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000374696
Total Pages : 175 pages
Book Rating : 4.98/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Museums, International Exhibitions and China's Cultural Diplomacy written by Da Kong and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-03-31 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Museums, International Exhibitions and China’s Cultural Diplomacy examines the role museums and, more specifically, international exhibitions, have played in shaping China’s international image to date. Drawing on theories and methods from museum studies and international relations, the book evaluates the contribution international exhibitions make to China’s cultural diplomacy strategy. Considering their impact on the country’s international image, Kong also probes the mechanisms and processes involved, examining in detail the policy of, and international activities promoted by, the Chinese government. The book also analyses the motives of the Chinese and overseas museums that host these exhibitions. Taking some major exhibitions that were on show in the UK during the 21st century as a representative case study, the book reveals the mechanisms by which these exhibitions were developed and shared overseas. Questioning who really shapes the image of China, Kong challenges Western assumptions and looks ahead to consider whether, moving forward, the Chinese government and museums could work together in a mutually beneficial way. Museums, International Exhibitions and China’s Cultural Diplomacy contributes to the growing literature on museums and diplomacy. As such, it will be of interest to academics and students engaged in the study of museums and heritage, international relations, culture, politics, China and wider Asia.

Author : Kirk A. Denton
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824840062
Total Pages : 362 pages
Book Rating : 4.68/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Exhibiting the Past written by Kirk A. Denton and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2013-12-31 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Mao era, China’s museums served an explicit and uniform propaganda function, underlining official Party history, eulogizing revolutionary heroes, and contributing to nation building and socialist construction. With the implementation of the post-Mao modernization program in the late 1970s and 1980s and the advent of globalization and market reforms in the 1990s, China underwent a radical social and economic transformation that has led to a vastly more heterogeneous culture and polity. Yet China is dominated by a single Leninist party that continues to rely heavily on its revolutionary heritage to generate political legitimacy. With its messages of collectivism, self-sacrifice, and class struggle, that heritage is increasingly at odds with Chinese society and with the state’s own neoliberal ideology of rapid-paced development, glorification of the market, and entrepreneurship. In this ambiguous political environment, museums and their curators must negotiate between revolutionary ideology and new kinds of historical narratives that reflect and highlight a neoliberal present. In Exhibiting the Past, Kirk Denton analyzes types of museums and exhibitionary spaces, from revolutionary history museums, military museums, and memorials to martyrs to museums dedicated to literature, ethnic minorities, and local history. He discusses red tourism—a state sponsored program developed in 2003 as a new form of patriotic education designed to make revolutionary history come alive—and urban planning exhibition halls, which project utopian visions of China’s future that are rooted in new conceptions of the past. Denton’s method is narratological in the sense that he analyzes the stories museums tell about the past and the political and ideological implications of those stories. Focusing on “official” exhibitionary culture rather than alternative or counter memory, Denton reinserts the state back into the discussion of postsocialist culture because of its centrality to that culture and to show that state discourse in China is neither monolithic nor unchanging. The book considers the variety of ways state museums are responding to the dramatic social, technological, and cultural changes China has experienced over the past three decades.

Author : Karl E. Meyer
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
ISBN 13 : 1466879297
Total Pages : 432 pages
Book Rating : 4.94/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The China Collectors written by Karl E. Meyer and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2015-03-10 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thanks to Salem sea captains, Gilded Age millionaires, curators on horseback and missionaries gone native, North American museums now possess the greatest collections of Chinese art outside of East Asia itself. How did it happen? The China Collectors is the first full account of a century-long treasure hunt in China from the Opium Wars and the Boxer Rebellion to Mao Zedong's 1949 ascent. The principal gatherers are mostly little known and defy invention. They included "foreign devils" who braved desert sandstorms, bandits and local warlords in acquiring significant works. Adventurous curators like Langdon Warner, a forebear of Indiana Jones, argued that the caves of Dunhuang were already threatened by vandals, thereby justifying the removal of frescoes and sculptures. Other Americans include George Kates, an alumnus of Harvard, Oxford and Hollywood, who fell in love with Ming furniture. The Chinese were divided between dealers who profited from the artworks' removal, and scholars who sought to protect their country's patrimony. Duanfang, the greatest Chinese collector of his era, was beheaded in a coup and his splendid bronzes now adorn major museums. Others in this rich tapestry include Charles Lang Freer, an enlightened Detroit entrepreneur, two generations of Rockefellers, and Avery Brundage, the imperious Olympian, and Arthur Sackler, the grand acquisitor. No less important are two museum directors, Cleveland's Sherman Lee and Kansas City's Laurence Sickman, who challenged the East Coast's hegemony. Shareen Blair Brysac and Karl E. Meyer even-handedly consider whether ancient treasures were looted or salvaged, and whether it was morally acceptable to spirit hitherto inaccessible objects westward, where they could be studied and preserved by trained museum personnel. And how should the US and Canada and their museums respond now that China has the means and will to reclaim its missing patrimony?

Author : Craig Clunas
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691253021
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.22/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Chinese Painting and Its Audiences written by Craig Clunas and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2023-10-17 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of the reception of Chinese painting from the sixteenth century to the present What is Chinese painting? When did it begin? And what are the different associations of this term in China and the West? In Chinese Painting and Its Audiences, which is based on the A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts given at the National Gallery of Art, leading art historian Craig Clunas draws from a wealth of artistic masterpieces and lesser-known pictures, some of them discussed here in English for the first time, to show how Chinese painting has been understood by a range of audiences over five centuries, from the Ming Dynasty to today. Chinese Painting and Its Audiences demonstrates that viewers in China and beyond have irrevocably shaped this great artistic tradition. Arguing that audiences within China were crucially important to the evolution of Chinese painting, Clunas considers how Chinese artists have imagined the reception of their own work. By examining paintings that depict people looking at paintings, he introduces readers to ideal types of viewers: the scholar, the gentleman, the merchant, the nation, and the people. In discussing the changing audiences for Chinese art, Clunas emphasizes that the diversity and quantity of images in Chinese culture make it impossible to generalize definitively about what constitutes Chinese painting. Exploring the complex relationships between works of art and those who look at them, Chinese Painting and Its Audiences sheds new light on how the concept of Chinese painting has been formed and reformed over hundreds of years. Published in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC Please note: All images in this ebook are presented in black and white and have been reduced in size.

Author : Marcia R. Ristaino
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 148 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

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Download or read book China's Intrepid Muse written by Marcia R. Ristaino and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This illustrated study presents the life and work of China's most famous living cartoonist and caricaturist, Ding Cong.

Author : Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.)
Publisher : Metropolitan Museum of Art
ISBN 13 : 0870994832
Total Pages : 97 pages
Book Rating : 4.38/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Ancient Chinese Art written by Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.) and published by Metropolitan Museum of Art. This book was released on 1987 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : 國立故!4d!JU!^z
Publisher : Metropolitan Museum of Art
ISBN 13 : 0870997661
Total Pages : 144 pages
Book Rating : 4.62/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Splendors of Imperial China written by 國立故!4d!JU!^z and published by Metropolitan Museum of Art. This book was released on 1996 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The collection of the National Palace Museum is made up largely of the personal holdings of the Ch'ien-lung emperor (reigned 1736-95). Representing the artistic legacy of imperial China, it offers an unsurpassed view of Chinese civilization. The objects lavishly illustrated and described in this book, which include magnificent ritual bronzes, precious jades, monumental landscape paintings, and exquisite ceramics, are among the finest ever created." "Published to accompany the exhibition "Splendors of Imperial China: Treasures from the National Palace Museum, Taipei," the book takes the reader through the most significant periods of Chinese culture: its foundations in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, its flowering in the sophisticated world of the Sung dynasty, its exuberance during the Ming, and its technical brilliance under the Manchus. The author makes the unique beauty of this art accessible through comparisons of selected works and through discussion of their historical context."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved