Page 46 - Jindezhen Porcelain Production of the 19th C. by Ellen Huang, Univ. San Diego 2008

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art] and that people who come to watch this preliminary exhibition would develop a mass

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art (dazhong yishu).” Guomindang Administrative Councilor (xingzheng yuan) and

guohua art critic Teng Guᆚոencouraged “Chinese citizens [to] go and take a look in

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order to advance their knowledge of [Chinese] history and art.” In his written report

from London in the Dagongbao, Executive Yuan official Zheng Tianxiቍ˂፼ stated that

a chief aim of the Nationalist government was to “publicize (xuan yang) Chinese national

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art and culture.” Clearly, the exhibition’s epistemological framework reflected what
Timothy Mitchell has observed in modern exhibitions in general, whereby objects

embody a deeper meaning. In this case, during an era of active state-led nation-building,

these objects were symbols of “China.”

Despite the shared nationalist framework that structured the understanding of the

exhibition as consisting of national art objects, differences between the British and
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Chinese conceptions of Chinese art existed. As the Royal Academy’s commemorative

catalogue demonstrates, English scholars organized the art objects temporally (Figure 5).

The galleries of display in London’s Burlington House were categorized first and

foremost by dynastic order, with a gallery labeled Shang-Yin-Zhou, followed by a gallery

called Wei-Tang dynasties, three galleries identified as Song, a room called Song-Yuan

dynasty and another gallery with the heading Early Ming dynasty. Positioning the

exhibition displays according to a temporal framework lent themselves easily to

understanding Chinese culture as progressing along a linear timeline of development, a

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hallmark of constructed national identities. By contrast, at the Shanghai preliminary

showing, as at the Nanjing show, Chinese display strategies organized art works by