Decorative power: Chinese objects and cultural diplomacy in Victorian London’s exhibitionary experience, 1851-1901
Embargo Date
2027-09-19
OA Version
Citation
Abstract
While British consumers had purchased artifacts coming from China since the seventeenth century, during the Victorian era, a proliferation of international exhibitions and museums offered Britons new ways to see Chinese objects. With the opening of the Great Exhibition in Crystal Palace in 1851, the very first international event of its kind, London in the second half of the nineteenth century also witnessed the changes of international exhibitions’ themes and layouts, and the increase of museum collections and galleries. International wars and the increasingly close Sino-British diplomatic relationship since 1860s also resulted in the birth of new institutions in China and London for trade and diplomacy. All these changes became the basis of how China was displayed through the transnational collaboration and competition of a wide range of people working for China’s participation in such events in London, including many British royals, international exhibition commissioners, museum experts, merchants, Europeans and Americans working for the Chinese government, as well as the Chinese envoy and artisans coming to London. This dissertation examines the collection and display of Chinese objects in nine international exhibitions in London as well as the exhibits staged at the British Museum and the South Kensington Museum from 1851 to 1901. Interrogating both English and Chinese official records, personal writings, as well as the press coverage and publications available to the public, it explores how these different venues first obtained, then classified, and displayed Chinese objects, as well as how the visitors reacted to these displays. It argues that the image of China as a producer of admirable artistic works became the most distinct characteristic of China because of historical trade connections, exhibition participants’ decisions, as well as the interest of museum curators and collectors. During an era that mixed military clashes and diplomatic interactions as well as sinophobic sentiments and fascination of certain Chinese products, an “artistic China” became a basis of positive perceptions of China in the mind of British fairgoers and the catalyst for international sociability in these London cultural events. As the first full-length study of all these Chinese displays in Victorian exhibition venues, this dissertation supplements the current scholarly works that focus on the study of the Great Exhibition of 1851, the decrease of British public’s interest in Chinese art in Victorian era, and the analysis of museum curators and collectors’ writings and activities. Through reconstructing the trajectory of the changing “China-themed” exhibits in these exhibitionary spaces, it highlights the persistent attraction of Chinese decorative arts in Victorian London in the context of trade and diplomacy between these two countries. As its title “Decorative Power” indicates, this dissertation sheds light on the powerful influence of the international lives of different Chinese objects on Victorian Britons’ minds, and both the extent and limit of them for challenging a one-side assertion of British superiority by Britons.
Description
2024