A Trip to China

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. The Canadian Fund for Cultural Understanding through Culture (CFIUC), an organization co-chaired by Dr Nelly Ng of Toronto, sponsored the tour. The delegation included Victor Rabinovitch, Sylvie Morel, Jean-Luc Pilon, Michèle Canto, and Mark O'Neill of the Canadian Museum of Civilization (Gatineau); Dr Anthony Shelton of the Museum of Anthropology (Vancouver); Pierre Bail, Musée de la civilization (Québec); Jann Bailey, Kamloops Art Gallery; Tony Luppino, Edmonton Art Gallery; John McAvity, Monique Horth, Canadian Museums Association, and the author. 2. The Chinese characters for ‘museum’ are ‘bo wu guan’ or sometimes just ‘bo guan’. ‘Bo’ is the character for rich or universal and ‘wu’ used with ‘bo’ means natural science, while ‘guan’ signifies a public building. An art museum is ‘mei bo guan’ —the museum for beauty. 3. http://www.dpm.org.cn/english/default.asp 4. http://www.njmuseum.com/english/zh/4nbls.htm 5. Notes from the Palace Museum website: http://www.dpm.org.cn/english/default.asp, and the National Palace Museum website: http://www.npm.gov.tw/en/administration/about/director.htm 6. The wood is Catalpa bungei (Bignoniaceae). The identification is courtesy of Li-Bing Zhang of the Missouri Botanical Garden. 7. Source: http://english.people.com.cn/200606/30/eng20060630_278703.html 8. I found it surprising that many of the collections were, in fact, acquired by donation from private collectors. In his recent book, Peter Hessler describes the Ming furniture collection of Chen Mengjia, an eminent Chinese archaeologist, now housed in the Shanghai Museum (Hessler 2006 Hessler, P. 2006. Oracle bones: A journey between China's past and present, New York: Harper Collins. [Google Scholar]). 9. Ethnicity is an important element in contemporary China, and the challenge to both privilege the culture of the minority non-Han Chinese populations, and to ensure that they integrate into modern China, resonate for many in the West. Language is another important issue, as the language spoken in the south is not that spoken in the capital. The state has adopted Mandarin (the language of the north) as a lingua franca, but increasingly English is coming to be seen as the most desirable third (or second) language for many Chinese

Archaeology · Art · Art history · China · Visual arts · Chinese history and philosophy · Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation · History