以中国早期博物馆为对话语境重新探讨当代博物馆浪潮-1

RETHINKING THE EARLY MODERN MUSEUM IN CHINA IN THE CONTEXT OF THE CONTEMPORARY CHINESE MUSEUM BOOM

ABSTRACT

The recent museum boom in China has drawn much attention in the West, but few have paid attention to the first museum boom in China in the early modern period, from 1911-1937. During this period, museums in China developed in a fast and vibrant manner, and aspects of these museums have shaped museums in China today. I investigate early modern museums on a micro scale, and provide a detailed account of historical information about the pioneering private museums like the Zikawei Museum, Shanghai Museum, Nantong Museum, as well as the significant national museums like the National History Museum, Institute of Antiquity Exhibition, and Palace Museum. Then, I examine the development of contemporary museums on a macro scale, with an analysis of regulations and laws, notable museums and exhibitions, in order to explain the basis of the Chinese museum boom today. I also discuss the international loan exhibition, a device that ran though the history of Chinese museums and serves the diplomatic needs of the Chinese government. Lastly, I shed light on the rising demand for foreign exhibitions in China, and point out how important it is for the West to understand the history of Chinese museums in order to facilitate successful cooperative traveling exhibitions.

Introduction

“Museum,” as a public cultural institution, was an “imported good” from the West during the second half of the nineteenth century. With the defeat of the Second Opium War (1857-1860), the Qing Court and the educated elites saw the need to learn from the West, and initiated the Self-Strengthening Movement or the Westernization Movement 洋务运动 (1861-1895). With the goal of strengthening themselves to defend foreign armies, they sent personnel abroad to learn from the West. Although the main focus was on scientific, industrial, and political knowledge, museums were often notable destinations on their travel routes. A Qing official, Bin Chun 斌椿, who wrote a travel memoir called “Notes on the Raft”乘槎笔记, praised the royal collections in Europe; he commented, “I have never heard anything like it, and I have never seen anything like it.”

It was not until Li Gui 李圭, a custom and taxation officer who went to Philadelphia as a Chinese delegate for the Expo in 1876, that the word “博物馆,” the official translation of “museum,” started to occur in Chinese literature. After Li attended the Expo, he traveled to Washington D.C., New York City, London, Paris, Rouen, Marseille, and wrote four volumes of memoirs called “A Travel around the Globe” 环游地球新录 (Fig.1). In this travelogue, he described the British Museum as “a museum made of white stones,” and the translation of the word, “museum” meant an institution that collected and displayed everything in the world.

With the accounts of the Western museums documented in the Qing officials’ memoirs, the call for a Chinese museum heated up. From 1873-1899, there were more than 30 scholarly and newspaper articles focusing on museums in the West and later, on the missionary museums being built in Shanghai, Tianji, Lushun and Chengdu. Educated elites like Zhang Jian 张謇 made proposals to the Qing court for a national museum and library, with the purpose of educating the public. The Qing court never responded, and it was not until The Institute of Antiquities Exhibition (IAE) 古物陈列所 opened in 1914 that the first National Museum finally opened to the public. Due to political turmoil, it was missionary museums like the Zikawei Museum 徐家汇博物馆 and the private university museums like the Nantong Museum 南通博物院 that broke the ground for the development of museums in China.

The panorama of museum industry in modern China (1883-1949) was often pictured as isolated nodes, with each of them bearing significant historical meaning by themselves, but unable to be connected with a single thread. Whether it the lack of historical materials or the lack of imagination, China actually experienced the first wave of a museum boom from the Revolution of 1911 辛亥革命 to the full outbreak of the Japanese-Sino War in 1937, and developed diverse models of museum management (Fig.2). The number of museums registered at the Museum Association of China reached 62 in 1936, and some argued that the number was underestimated.

Methodology

In the following thesis, I will adopt a holistic approach to the development of Chinese museums. Due to limited documentary resources, I will investigate early modern museums in China (before 1949) on a micro scale. I will provide a historical account of each important museum through an examination of collections, structures, permanent exhibitions, traveling exhibitions to the West, publications, and their significance in the historical context of the modern China. Then I will examine the influences the early modern museums had on the contemporary Chinese museums on a macro scale. I will provide an overview of the museums in this period of time with the help of statistics, the regulations and laws guiding the developments of the museums, and accounts of representative museums, exhibitions and personnels. Then, I will examine the apparatus of international loan exhibition, both in the early modern period and the contemporary period, to unveil that how the contemporary museums are influenced by the early modern ones in terms of ideology, and the opportunities and challenges facing the Chinese museums today.

Early Missionary Museums: The Zikawei Museum

The first modern museum in China, 徐家汇博物院 the Zikawei Museum, was founded by the French Jesuits in Shanghai, under the guidance of Father Pierre Marie Heude (1836-1902). In remembrance of Father Heude, the founding year of the Zikawei Museum was set to 1868, the year that Father Heude arrived at Shanghai, although the construction of the museum was not completed until 1883. The Zikawei Museum, along with a cathedral, a library, an observatory, orphanages, and a university (震旦大学 Aurora University), had been planned as part of the French Jesuits’ mission to the Yangzi Delta.

The first half of the Zikawei Museum’s history (1868-1930) witnessed a ‘working museum’ of natural history serving the needs of the Europeans, that was not open to general public and could only be visited upon the approval of the director. Father Heude, a trained zoologist, collected specimen of plants, reptiles, fish, birds and mammals from the entire Orient, and built the museum as a center of studies and scientific research. 徐家汇博物院 The Zikawei Museum was renamed the Heude Museum 震旦博物院 in 1930, which marked the beginning of the second half of the museum’s history (1930-1952). Shifting from a privileged working museum to a university and public museum belonging to 震旦大学 Aurora University, the Heude Museum opened an exhibition hall of zoology and other of antiquities(Fig.3).

Expanding the collection to Chinese ancient antiquities collected by Father Beck, the Heude Museum contained both samples of Western scientific glory and pieces of Chinese civilization which constructed a discourse of an obsolete Chinese ‘past’ versus a “European modernity.” The visitors of the Heude museums from 1930-1952 were mainly university students and well-educated social elites, thus the educational function of the museum was emphasized, and it was on the agenda of the Catholics to provide Chinese youth a higher education in a Christian environment.

The Shanghai Museum: First Public Museum in China

If the Zikawei Museum was the first modern museum built in China, the Shanghai Museum 亚洲文会博物院 (literally, “The Asian Society Museum”) (1874-1949) was the first modern museum opened to the public (Fig.4). The governing body of the Shanghai Museum was the North-China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (NCBRAS), and the land was granted by the British Crown in the colonial part of Shanghai. NCBRAS was founded by a group of Westerners living in China in 1857 for the study and publications of the natural history and culture of China. For such a purpose, the collection of the Shanghai Museum resembled the Zikawei Museum, which included specimens of natural history, humanities and the arts.

The Shanghai Museum received donations from European merchants, as well as the Shanghai Municipal Council, but for the most part, its funding came from taxpayers in the colonial part of Shanghai. The curators of the Shanghai Museum were members of NCBRAS, and they were unpaid because of the limited funding. The audience of the museums consisted of two-thirds Chinese and one-third foreigners, and before 1930s, the labels and catalogues were mostly in English.

The mission of the Shanghai Museum experienced a change from promoting Sinological studies in Shanghai among Europeans to disseminating Western knowledge and ideologies to the educated Chinese social elites during 1930s. The Shanghai Museum started to display Chinese labels and guidebooks accordingly, which also contributed to the increasing fundraising needs of the museum among the Chinese elites.

After all, the Shanghai Museum, as well as the Zikawei Museum, was established and operated by Europeans in the foreign concessions of Shanghai. Both of them served the needs of the Western residents, whether scientific, cultural or nostalgic of Western-styled public facilities in their home countries. In addition, the early modern museums built by the Europeans helped to mark the social boundaries between those who knew English, who were the social elites educated in a Western school, and those who did not. From this perspective, these museums were regarded as part of the Westernization process of Shanghai in the colonial period.

The Nantong Museum: First Modern Museum of China

While the Zikawei Museum and the Shanghai Museum were first museums in China, the Nantong Museum 南通博物苑 was recognized as the first modern museum of China (Fig.5). The founder and operator of the Nantong Museum was Zhang Jian 张謇, a wealthy entrepreneur, a well-educated social elite, and a pioneer of China’s modernization in the late 19th and early 20th century. Although the proposals of building a modern museum of China were raised during the Hundred Days’ Reform 戊戌变法, the young Guangxu Emperor 光绪皇帝 failed to make it a reality. Zhang Jian realized the educational power of the museums during his business trip to Japan, and made two proposals to the Qing Court for the establishment of a national museum in 1905, but received little attention. With little hope for the Qing Court to build a national museum, Zhang Jian started to build a private museum as part of his educational plan to modernize the important commercial town of Nantong.

Zhang Jian’s family was the founder and sole funding entity of the Nantong Museum, and Zhang Jian purchased 666 square meters of land from 29 families to construct his private museum. The collections included four categories, which were nature, history, the arts and education, which came from his personal collection, purchase, or donations. At 1913, the Nantong Museum had 2,900 items, and the number increased to 3,605 in 1933. The Nantong museum was divided into a zoo, a Chinese garden, several exhibition galleries and Zhang Jian’s private residency. All the items were put on display, so the management of the collections became a problem, with the result that some of the items were broken by visitors or stolen from the museum.

The museum was opened to the teachers and students of the Nantong Normal College 南通师范大学, a college funded by Zhang, and members of the social elites at 1912. Due to the recklessness of the visitors, Zhang Jian started to issue permits for entrance. And later in 1927, the museum was finally opened to the public, free of charge.

The establishment of the Nantong Museum served the needs of Chinese social elites in the modernization movement during the early 20th century. It was unclear whether the Zikawei Museum and the Shanghai Museum had influenced Zhang Jian’s museum management, but Zhang believed that Westernization was a solution to China’s problems at that time. The Nantong Museum was partly destroyed and occupied by Japanese troops during WWII, and taken over by the government after 1949. Today, the Nantong Museum is advertised as the first modern museum of China, and Zhang Jian is the patriotic hero who was proactive in establishing the importance of museums in China.

Impact of the privately-funded museums in China before 1949

Searching through the history of Chinese museums today, the first modern museum in the official history of museums in China is a disputed subject. Although the Zikawei Museum and the Shanghai Museum were among the first modern museums established on Chinese soil, some Chinese scholars denied its position as the first modern museum in China. The rejection was not a simple question of their governance by foreign missionaries instead of by Chinese scholars and officials, but a more complex one involving the nature of their collections and their objectives. The early missionary museums were built upon natural history collections and only incorporated minor antique collections, thus they were not easily accepted by the national Chinese museums, which formed around historical cultural artifacts. The museum objective of educating Chinese youth in a Catholic fashion, as well as serving the needs for the Western residents in the semi-colonial China, reflected a colonial ideology that made it difficult for the later nationalist museums to accept. The model of missionary museums was not adopted by subsequent museums, and gradually lost its influence on the development of the museum field.

On the official websites of National Museum of China 国家博物馆, the Nantong Museum is often referred to as the origin of modern Chinese museums, while the missionary museums are not mentioned. As a private museum built by a social elite, the collection of the Nantong Museum was built upon its founder’s private collections and expanded with his personal funding. The objective of the Nantong Museum was to aid the founder’s private university to educate the students. The educational function of the Nantong Museum has been inherited by the university museums in China ever since, but the mainstream of Chinese museums bear little resemblance to the model of the Nantong Museum.

Historical Backgrounds in Beijing from 1911 to 1924

The success of the Revolution of 1911 marked the abdication of the last Qing emperor, Puyi, and the establishment of the Republic of China (ROC) in Nanjing. Although the leader of the Nationalist party, Sun Yat-sen 孙中山, served as the first provisional president of China in Nanjing since January 1, 1912, the power in Beijing was still seized in the hands of Yuan Shikai 袁世凯, who led the Beiyang army 北洋军队. Yuan arranged the abdication of the Qing court, and in return, demanded the position of the provisional president of ROC in 1912. Yuan remained the president of the ROC for four years, and his government was often referred to as the Beiyang Government 北洋政府. In 1912, Yuan signed “The Articles of Favorable Treatment of the Qing Emperor” 清室优待条件 with the Qing Court, which permitted their residence in the inner court of the Forbidden City and treated like a foreign monarch. The articles were torn to pieces during the Beijing Coup 北京政变 in 1924, and the Qing court was finally removed from the Forbidden City. Separated by the Gate of Heavenly Purity 乾清门 and two courtyards, the Outer Court contained three grand ceremony halls on the central axis and two smaller halls flanking the sides, awing the officials and impressing the ambassadors. The inner court occupied less than half of the Forbidden City, but contained more buildings than the outer court, which were smaller in size and diverse in style, and serving as domestic areas for the emperor and his concubines (Fig. 6).

Public Museums before 1949

It was during this period, from 1912-1925, that the Forbidden City became a competing ground for three important public museums in Beijing (see fig.5). Led by different departments or parties, the three of them shared the palace, just like different political parties shared China. All of them, at one point or another, received foreign funds or sent artifacts to the West for traveling exhibitions. When the government of ROC was established in 1912, museum management fell under the governance of the Ministry of Education. The First Division of Public Education 社会教育司第一科 was established under the Ministry of Education, overseeing the management of history museums, libraries, art museums and exhibitions, as well as theatrical and musical performances; the management of antiquity was under the control of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and since museums were not well-established, the duties to protect antiquities became the role of the Division of Etiquette and Custom 礼俗司. Under the lead of the Ministry of Education, the National History Museum 国立历史博物馆 occupied the Duan Gate 端门 and Meridan Gate 午门, two structures with arches serving as the gates of the Forbidden City, with pavilions above serving as government offices (Fig.7) ; under the lead of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Institute of Antiquities Exhibition 古物陈列所 took the Hall of Marital Valor 武英殿 in the outer court of the Forbidden City; under the lead of the Committee for the Disposition of the Qing Imperial Possessions 清室善后委员会, the Palace Museum 故宫博物院 took over the inner court when the Qing emperor was removed from the Forbidden City.

The foundations of Chinese museums were built by the three museums located in the Forbidden City and the first museum boom in China came before the Sino-Japanese war in the 1930s. Although bearing different ideologies and representing different parties, they all tried to represent the history of a glorious Chinese civilization, as well as mirroring the struggles of China in the early 20th-century.

National History Museum

The National History Museum 国立历史博物馆 (NHM) was the first state-sponsored museum in China, with the preparation works starting in June 1912. The Minister of Education of ROC, Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培, appointed Hu Yujin 胡玉缙, a respected scholar who went to Japan to observe and study the universities, museums and libraries, as the director of the National History Museum Preparatory Committee 国立历史博物馆筹备处. The Committee chose the Imperial College 国子监 to house the museum, emphasizing its educational function from the start (Fig. 8). The National History Museum Committee started with the collections from the Imperial College and the Confucian Temple 孔庙 in Beijing, which were composed of classic texts, teaching aids of the classics, sacrificial vessels from the Qing Dynasty, ritual vessels from the Zhou Dynasty, as well as recently acquired burial artifacts excavated from Luoyang, Henan. The NHM was prepared with the intention of building a national collection of historical cultural artifacts that could produce a new cultural identity for the modern China. The objective of the NHM was stated in the newspaper Education Weekly 教育周报, “ the historical artifacts will enlighten the dull, and calm the agitated. It will serve to impress the civilized countries in the world, as well as support the public education inside China.”

Since China was the origin of bookmaking and print making, the Royal Academy for the Graphic Arts and the Book Industry in Leipzig, Germany approached the Beiyang Government 北洋政府 (1912-1927) in 1913 for ancient books and artifact for the International Exhibition For The Book Industry and the Graphic Arts held in Leipzig in 1914. German delegates worked with the Ministry of Education to borrow some artifacts for the international exhibition, and eleven artifacts were selected from the NHM. In their agreement, German delegates claimed that, “all the artifacts would be protected with glass cases, and there would be labels demonstrating they belonged to the NHM in Beijing.” In November, 1913, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs approved the request for the traveling artifacts, arranged for the transfer of the artifacts, and sent catalogues regarding the artifacts. Ironically, the first time NHM put their collections on public display occurred in Leipzig, Germany instead of Beijing, and the Chinese needed to wait nine years before a special exhibition on recent archaeological excavations was opened to the public in 1921.

In 1917, the Ministry of Education proposed to move the NHM to the Meridan Gate and Duan Gate in the Forbidden City, since the Imperial College only had limited space for display and collection management. During that time, the Institute of Antiquities Exhibition was already opened to the public in the outer court with the support of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The delay in the development of the NHM was a direct result of limited funding, and when the NHM was finally established as a museum by the Ministry of Education in 1920, the NHM only had enough funding for collection acquisition, management, and research. In this sense, the NHM developed at a much slower pace than the IAE and the Palace Museum. One major difference between them was that the NHM was trying to build a collection from a humble start, while the IAE and the Palace Museum were brought into existence for the management of the royal collections.

In order to expand their modest collection size, the NHM turned to archaeology, like the foreign expedition teams and collectors. The NHM sent out buyers to collect artifacts from antique shops and excavation sites, and at the same time, they assembled teams of archaeologists around the country to initiate and participate in archaeological excavations. For example, in 1921, a Song dynasty ruin was located in Julu, Henan, and the NHM sent out experts for excavation, with a harvest of over 200 pieces of Song artifacts. This was the first time a Chinese museum sent out an archaeological team to acquire archaeological collections, setting the model for collection acquisition for provincial museums. A temporary exhibition was put together for the archaeological findings in Julu, with a aim to fundraise for the flood victims in Henan. The NHM also received donations from local merchants, and kept the diplomatic gifts from other countries on display.

The funding shortage continued to trouble the NHM, that due to the complexity of the political structures, they failed to raise funds from the Beiyang government. When a famous educator Hong Ye 洪业 visited the NHM in 1926, he realized the value of the collection and the difficulties of the museum. As a result, Hong persuaded the director of the Yenching University 燕京大学, John Stuart, to donate $6,000 to the NHM with the endowment he received from the Charles M. Hall Foundation. The funding was used to purchase equipments and display cases, as well as hire more personnel to prepare for the opening. On October 10, 1926, the NHM was opened to the public, with free access to public.

In 1927, the objective and organization of the NHM were modified, with four departments established under the guidance of a director. Based on the No. 168 Regulations published by the ROC on Oct 16, 1927, the objective of the NHM was “to collect historical artifacts and to promote public education.” The organization of the NHM was made up of a General Affairs department 总务部 overseeing official documents drafting, accounting and budget; an Acquisition department 征集部 researching, collecting, displaying and managing historical artifacts; an Editorial department 编辑部 in charge of cataloguing, translation and publication; and an Art department 艺术部 responsible of copying and taking photographs of the collection. With a well-established structure for collection acquisition, documentation and publication, the NHM expanded their collection size to 200,000 artifacts when the Japanese troops evaded China. The NHM transferred its collections to the South along with the Palace Museum and the IAE.

At the dawn of 1949, part of the NHM’s collection was selected and transferred to Taiwan, while the other part stayed in Beijing. The museum was renamed the National Beijing History Museum 国立北京历史博物馆 in 1949, as Museum of Chinese History 中国历史博物馆 in 1959, and finally in 2003, it merged with the Museum of Chinese Revolution 中国革命博物馆 to form the National Museum of China 中国国家博物馆 today (see fig.8).

The Institute of Antiquities Exhibition: Proto-National Museum in China

The institute of Antiquities Exhibition (IAE) 古物陈列所 was the first palace museum in China, although its short history of thirty-four years (1914-1948) made it less well-known to the world today than the renowned Palace Museum 故宫博物院. In the translated texts, people often mistake IAE for the Palace Museum, since both of them resided in the Forbidden City and displayed imperial treasures. As argued by Duan, the vice director of the Palace Museum and museum scholar, IAE was also the first proto-national museum opened to the public and the first art gallery in China.

Proposals for a national museum were brought up by scholars and officials alike since the Hundred Days’ Reform. The early twentieth century saw the coming of a collecting spree of Chinese artifacts among European and American museums; scholars were hired and expedition teams were established with the agenda of enriching their oriental collections. From 1876 to 1928, more than 42 foreign expedition teams visited and appropriated valuable cultural artifacts from China. Government officials, antique dealers, as well as foreign collectors, all played a part in the antique trade, with the result that the only antique collections left untouched were in the Chengde Palace 承德避暑山庄 and the Shenyang Palace 奉天行宫. In response to the loss of artifacts overseas, social elites and government officials made proposals to the Emperor Puyi 溥仪 for the establishment of a royal museum.

Zhang Jian, the founder of the Nantong Museum, twice advised the Qing Court to set up a royal museum, based on the model of Japanese royal museums. With the ignorance of the Qing Court, he finally established his own museum. Another educated elite who proposed the establishment of a royal museum was Jin Liang 金梁, the director of the Ministry of Home Affairs in the Shenyang Palace. In 1910, Jin wrote a letter to Puyi for permission to catalogue the royal treasures and to establish a royal museum. After the Beiyang Government was in charge, the royal family abdicated but still resided in the inner court of the Forbidden City. The Qing court still operated as a ‘foreign sovereignty’ and was recognized by the Beiyang Government from 1912-1924. There was still hope for the restitution of the monarchy, thus Jin further advised the emperor to protect the royal property by establishing a royal museum. In a secret letter from Jin to the emperor in 1924, Jin believed that the main task for them was to protect the royal palace and preserve the royal treasures. Jin wrote, ”First of all, we need to make catalogues of all the royal collections, and preserve them in a royal museum. The museum should be opened to the public, and the traveling exhibitions to other museums in the East (Japan) and the West (Europe) shall be put onto agenda. If the collections are made public, nobody can lay their hands on them.”

A royal museum was never founded due to the objections to the restitution of the monarchy in China during the time. Instead, the Beiyang Government founded the IAE under the supervision of the Ministry of Internal Affairs 内务部 in 1913. With the Qing royal family residing in the inner court, the Ministry of Home Affairs granted the Hall of Marital Valor, once a royal library located in the west part of the outer court, as the exhibition gallery for the IAE. The head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Zhu Qiqian 朱启钤, hired German architect, Curt Rothkegel, to renovate the Hall of Marital Valor (Fig. 9). The renovation projects modernized the Hall of Marital Valor, with the wooden windows changed into glass windows, and public water systems as well as a telephone introduced into the Forbidden City. Rothkegel also opened up the space inside the Hall of Marital Valor to accommodate more visitors. It is worth noting that the initial funding of the IAE, 200,000 yuan, came from the returned money of the U.S. government.

The collection of the IAE came from the royal collection in the Chengde 承德避暑山庄 and Shenyang palaces 沈阳故宫, with more than 119,500 pieces of furniture, bronzes, jade wares, paintings and calligraphy, clocks, books from Chengde Palace, and 114,600 bronzes, porcelains, calligraphies and paintings, books, jewelries from Shenyang Palace. An agreement was signed between the Ministry of Home Affairs and the abdicated Qing imperial family in 1913, with an understanding that the majority of the royal collections would be purchased by the Beiyang Government at a reasonable price set by a third-party antique dealer. In reality, the Beiyang Government paid the Qing court 3,511,476 yuan, which was an outrageously low price that the Qing court was forced to take.

The IAE opened its door to the public on October 10, 1914, which was also the National Day for the ROC (see fig.9). Considering Puyi was still residing in the Forbidden City, the Beiyang Government downplayed the opening of the IAE, compared to the opening of the Palace Museum in 1925. The display cases were loaded with artifacts that lacked proper labels, such that a famous writer and scholar, Lu Xun 鲁迅 wrote in his diary that it was more like a antique shop than a museum exhibition. Although opened to the public, the price of the ticket was set to the equivalence of 1 dollar, about a third of the average monthly salary in Beijing. The majority of the audience was the educated elites, government officials, university professors, merchants, as well as a great number of foreigners. In 1929, the annual visitors of the IAE reached its peak of 79,304.

Although it had not sent or received any traveling exhibition internationally, the IAE hosted visits from a British prince, a French general, a Japanese congressman, a Russian diplomat, and an American National Gallery director. John C. Ferguson, a collecting agent hired by the trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, wrote about the early exhibition halls of the IAE, which he called “The Government Museum,” “The Government Museum at Peking, containing some of the best art treasures of China, is unique among the museums of the world. In architectural design and detail and historical surroundings, as well as in the examples of art products stored within its walls, this Museum is exclusively and characteristically Chinese. The bronzes and jades, paintings and manuscripts, pottery and porcelain, inks and writing-brushes, all owe their common origin to the genius of the Chinese race.” It was worth noting that, the collection of the IAE came from the treasures of the Chengde and Shenyang Palace, while the imperial collections in the Forbidden City were still controlled and dispensed at Puyi’s will.

In summary, the Institute of Antiquities Exhibition was regarded as the first national art gallery in China. The IAE was the first attempt to transform the Qing Royal Palace into a public facility, and served as a proto-national art museum in China. The establishment of the IAE happened three years after the overthrown of the monarchy, with an objective to protect Chinese artifacts from smuggling and pawning, but it was not a political symbol for a modern state, since Puyi continued to reside in the inner court of the Forbidden City for thirteen years.

The Palace Museum

If the opening of IAE in 1914 signified the partial opening of the Forbidden City to the public, the opening of the Palace Museum 故宫博物院 in 1925 marked a full conversion of the Forbidden City from a royal palace to a public facility. The Beiyang Government in Beijing was not a homogenous entity, while a group of people advocated for the restoration of the monarchy, another opposed Puyi’s stay at the inner court like a “foreign sovereignty.” As a result, Feng Yuxiang 冯玉祥, a revolutionary warload of the Beiyang Army, initiated the ‘Beijing Coup’ and took control of the Forbidden City in 1924. After the coup, Huang Fu 黄郛 was appointed the acting president of the Beiyang Government, and tailored new policies based on revolutionist ideas. As part of the plan, Puyi was expelled from the Palace, and the Committee for the Disposition of the Qing Imperial Possessions 清室善后委员会 was put together to order a complete inventory of the palace contents. The committee consisted of revolutionary Beiyang officials, professors and graduates from Peking University 北京大学, and Nationalist Party members. They complied twenty-eight volumes of reports in 1925, with an inventory of more than 1,700,000 objects left behind by the Qing court.

While the IAE’s collection contained royal collections of the Chengde and Shenyang Palace, the Palace Museum’s collection included nearly every item once kept at the Qing imperial court, whether a daily utensil, a religious item, an antique or collectible. The collection was confiscated from the hands of Puyi without any form of compensation, because they were elevated as “national treasures,” and rightfully belonged to the country. The collection included collectibles like bronzes, jades, ceramics, paintings, calligraphy, enamel wares, lacquer wares, and daily utensils like a wooden stool.

The Committee started to face obstructions when Feng was forced to leave Beijing, and the new warlord Duan Qirui 段祺瑞 tried to restore the monarchy and stop the task of nationalizing imperial treasures. In order to diminish the chance of restoration, the Committee believed the best plan was to turn the Forbidden City into a museum. On September 29, 1925, the committee decided to open the Palace Museum to the public on October 10, 1925, the National Day of the ROC. Also, a provisional committee of 21 board members was selected as the governing body, and a council of nine people was selected as the executive body. Curatorial departments were established in the Palace Museum, including the Antique Department 古物馆, the Library 图书馆 and later the Archive Department 文献部. Huang Fu gave a speech at the opening ceremony of the Palace Museum, declaring the Palace Museum was a national symbol of the ROC, and the collections of the Palace Museum national treasures.

As opposed to the IAE, which received full political support and abundant fundings from the Beiyang Government, the Palace Museum struggled financially to maintain its political independence. From the establishment of the museum in 1925, the board refused sponsorship from the Duan Qirui Government, and maintained museum operations with admission incomes, personal funding and loans. Na Zhiliang 那志良, a researcher at the Palace Museum, wrote in his memoir that the Palace Museum experienced four reorganizations from 1925-1928, while two directors of the Palace Museum were imprisoned for their political views. In June 1928, when the Nationalist party took over the control of Beijing, the Palace Museum received steady funding and protection until 1949.

From 1925-1931, the major tasks for the Palace Museum were to classify, identity, and exhibit the collection, as well as to conserve the palaces. Over one million objects needed to be put into catalogues, at the same time, the staff needed to identify their authenticity. Artifacts had been smuggled out of the palace by the eunuchs for years, and they were often replaced by fakes. The first exhibition of the Palace Museum faced a situation similar to the IAE, that it looked like an antique shop more than a museum gallery. One of the curators wrote, “boxes of artifacts were laid upon one another, which made it hard for us to move the boxes or check the contents. Even when a box of artifacts was opened, it was difficult for us to tell the authentic from the fake, let alone the superior over the inferior.” Considering the number of artifacts left for the committee and the urgent need to open the door to the public, the curatorial quality of the exhibitions was sacrificed. The exhibition galleries were not remodeled by modern architects, and without much funding, they cleaned out some of the palaces and repainted the interiors themselves to make the palaces suitable for exhibition.

Nevertheless, the opening of the Palace Museum was a huge success. In the first two days, over 50,000 visitors came to the museum to see the House of Qing and their treasures. The admission fee for the Palace Museum was also the equivalent of 1 dollar, like the IAE, which also suggested that the targeted audience was also the well-to-do members of society. While the IAE occupied the outer court of the Forbidden City, the Palace Museum developed five routes for visitors to navigate inside the inner court. The permanent exhibition was the palace with its original decorations left by the emperors, while temporary exhibitions were hosted in the renovated galleries surrounding different palaces. For example, porcelains, calligraphy and paintings were exhibited near the Qianqing Palace 乾清宫, while precious books and archives were exhibited near the Ningshou Palace 宁寿宫 (Fig.10).

When the Nationalist party took over the control of Beijing in 1928, the Palace Museum stepped into its zenith period. The staff finished the initial classification and identification of the artifacts, while three curatorial departments organized exhibitions to showcase ancient Chinese culture and civilization. The Antique Department developed six palaces into fine art galleries for paintings, porcelains, clocks, bronze wares, and jade, and another 12 smaller ones into exhibition rooms for decorative arts like lacquer wares, silk, etc. The Library only occupied two palaces, one for Buddhist texts and portraiture, another one for rare books. The Archive Department took seven palaces, for historical paintings, imperial paintings, imperial documents and Qing currency. The overall quality of the exhibitions in the Palace Museum showed a lack of overall planning and research, with the artifacts roughly selected by three curatorial departments, and put together based on basic categories like time period or medium. The authenticity as well as the quality of the artifacts was not ensured in the exhibition, and most of the artifacts only had a name on the labels.

The educational function of the Palace Museum was fulfilled by making ink rubbings of important bronze or stone slabs, publishing monthly and weekly magazines and monographs, as well as reproducing their collections in the form of postcards, calendars and greeting cards. The staff at the Palace Museum, mostly well-educated scholars in the Peking University or in the West, aimed to “revitalize Chinese culture and civilization,” in order to “revitalize and guide the culture of our nation-state.”

When Japanese troops invaded China in 1931, to ensure the safety of national treasures, the Nationalist government transferred more than 60,000 items from the Palace Museum to Shanghai in 1932. During the time in Shanghai, the Chinese government was approached by the Royal Academy of Arts at Burlington House, London for a traveling exhibition. With the political agenda of getting recognized as the legitimate ruling government of China, and making China known to the world through its art, the National Government agreed to lend 984 objects to the Royal Academy of Arts, including 735 objects from the Palace Museum. The International Exhibition of Chinese Art from November 28,1935 to March 7, 1936 remained the largest exhibition of Chinese art ever mounted, and attracted a total of 401,768 visitors.

Less than seven years from the opening of the museum, a significant number of collections were packed up and transported to Shanghai in 1932, to Chongqing in 1937, to Nanjing in 1946-1948, and finally more than one third were transported to Taipei with the Nationalist party in 1949. From then on, there were two palace museums in the world, one located in the “Forbidden City” in Beijing, another in the suburbs of Taipei, which claimed to be the largest repository of Chinese cultural treasures in the world.

In the first thirty-four years of the Palace Museum’s history (1925-1949), the collections were moved six times, while the governing body was changed four times. The history of the Palace Museum reflected the prolonged struggle of China following the 1911 revolution. The establishment of the Palace Museum marked the end of the Qing monarchy and the beginning of the modern nation, and it served both as a symbol of cultural authority and political legitimacy for the Nationalist Government. The Palace Museum also preserved Chinese civilization, protected artifacts from further loss, and turned royal treasures into national cultural heritages.

Impact of the Public Museums

The objectives of the NHM, IAE and Palace Museums differed from the beginning. The NHM was proposed based upon the need for a national museum to serve the newly formed Republic of China; the IAE was formed as an art museum to preserve artifacts in the Chengde and Shenyang Palace from the illegal antique trade; while the Palace Museum was established to fulfill the counter-reconstitution agenda, and symbolized a turning point of Imperial China to Republican China.

The display method of the early public museums reflected how Chinese museums “localized” the “imported museum.” While the common practice in Western museums at the time was to display artifacts in a chronological order, Chinese museums like the NHM and the Palace Museum favored a display strategy that emphasized materiality. In the West, the display method was a temporal one that progressed through different dynasties, while in Chinese museums, the artifacts were first categorized by material types like bronzes, jade, ceramics, paintings, and then arranged in chronological order within each material type. The Chinese display method, in the analysis of scholars, as “promoted a timeless universality of cultural treasures and at the same time portrayed Chinese art proceeding along historical development.” This strategy concurred with the cyclical view of history in premodern China, that all the powers that ruled China could be traced back to the same origin, and each dynasty was a repetition of rises and falls, that in Chinese art, as John Ferguson stated, “the art spirit which found its expression in these various forms during the historic period joins hands even with the earliest mythological and legendary traditions of the country.”

In terms of collections acquisition, both the IAE and the Palace Museum relied on the royal collections of the Qing court. When they were founded, they were presented with the question of how to transform the royal treasures into public property, instead of where to obtain a sizable collection. The IAE transformed royal collections into the setting of an art museum, which served as a model for the disposal of aristocratic collections in China. The Palace Museum, was unique and unduplicatable in terms of its collections, that the historic architecture of the museum as its most valuable collection. The establishment of a public museum on a royal residence was both political and symbolic, which served the propagandist need of the Republican government, but failed to represent the identity of a new, modern nation. In order to shed light on the collection acquisition of municipal Chinese museums today, it is essential to analyze the logic behind the construction of the National History Museum, which was built from scratch and intended to showcase the rich culture and history of China.