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idealization of their own country - as any good modern ambassador would diplomatically

assert in public - what is important is the way in which Guo and his wife conceptually

connected these hopes for art’s ability to convey peace with the social chaos and political

upheaval that were then taking place in China. Thus, for the Chinese ambassador, the

artworks were not only national symbols and representations of a cultural history. Art

objects were not simply remnants of the past but agents in the present. Works of art were

an activity and embodied a “force,” the significance of which lay in both the changing

historical context and the political present. Similar remarks about the nature of Chinese

art were made at the opening luncheon by Zheng Tianxi (Zheng Futing), the second of

two Special Chinese Commissioners for the exhibition. Zheng noted that the objects had

come to England with the goodwill of China, and that such art works were not produced

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with a “bayonet, but founded upon peace, virtue, and affection.”

III. Material Concerns: Beyond Cultural Symbolism
Criticisms of London Exhibition Displays

Just as the Chinese foreign minister Guo’s comments endowed art with a political

role in the present, Chinese artists and scholars also had presentist concerns when

viewing the exhibition in Shanghai. Like the British organizers, Republican China’s

writers, exhibition planners, and art appreciators valued the exhibition’s value as a

didactic display of a national art and culture. After viewing the pre-exhibit held at the

Bank of China building in Shanghai, Ye Gongchuo໢ࢷၞ, a calligrapher, painter,

railway official, and future creator of the simplified Chinese script for the People’s

Republic of China, expressed his hope that “this exhibit increase our awareness [of our