Page 125 - Collecting and Displaying China's Summer Palace in the West

110 Kevin McLoughlin

Figure 7.4 Close-up of the Hope Grant Ewer as it was displayed at the National Museum
of Scotland in the Lady Ivy Wu Gallery between 1996 and 2008. By kind
permission of the National Museums Scotland.

Figure 7.5 Label used for the Hope Grant Ewer in the Lady Ivy Wu Gallery at the National
Museum of Scotland between 1996 and 2008. By kind permission of the
National Museums Scotland.

but faced with a choice to redisplay the ewer in 2011, effectively in exactly the same
way in which it had been up until 2008—an initial plan for the gallery reinstall,
following required that the entire gallery should be reinstalled exactly as it had
been prior to its de-installation in 2008. As the curator then responsible for the
reinstallation of the gallery I felt that the ewer required significantly more in the way
of appropriate historical context than could be afforded it in a single label text of a
scant two to three lines, and so made a conscious choice not to redisplay the ewer