Paper submitted to 'Alternative Mobility Future' Conference, Lancaster, 2004
(Draft paper, please do not quote!)
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Should Taiwan’s ‘Mona Lisa’ Travel to the US?
— The Construction of Risk in the International Travelling Exhibition
Chia-Ling Lai
Dept. of Sociology, Lancaster University, UK
E-mail address: lai_chialing@yahoo.co.uk
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Introduction
Travel is normally associated with leisure and pleasure, but on many occasions it
occurs under the threat of danger and risk (Urry, 2004). This applies not only to the
corporeal mobility of tourists/travellers, but also to the travel of objects (Lury, 1997).
This paper focuses on the travel of precious museum objects through the international
travelling exhibition across national borders (Lai, 2004). These objects are considered
the fixed objects most retaining reference to specific boundaries, such as the territory
of a nation-state (Lury, 1997). Therefore, their boundary-crossing mobilities could
easily provoke controversy regarding the issue of risk. Moreover, the direction of the
1
cross-national travel of exhibitions matters. This study focuses on exhibition’s
outbound travel out of a national boundary, which conveys different meanings for the
people in a certain community from receiving inbound travelling exhibitions from
other countries. Therefore, the controversy over the risk of travel tends to happen
more often in the international travelling exhibition’s guest community than in the
host community.
However, instead of arguing that the risk is ontological, realistic and universal
(Beck, 1992), I suggest that the risk of travelling exhibitions is more a discursive
practice through which that risk delineates the reconstructed self and the
untrustworthy other (Douglas, 1992). However, unlike most academic debates on risk,
which emphasise the spread of the ‘bads’, such as environmental hazards and
dangerous diseases (Lupton, 1999; Macnaghten and Urry, 1998), the outbound
international travelling exhibition engages the perception of danger and risk when
sending the ‘good’ to Others’ hands. Also, unlike most discussions examining how the
peripheral is constructed as dangerous and blameworthy by the centre (Douglas,
1992), by the case of Taiwan’s exhibition travelling to the US this paper aims to
unravel how the peripheral constructs the centre as dangerous and untrustworthy.
Moreover, since an exhibition is a significant mode of representation, most
discussions on the controversial museum exhibitions focused on those exhibitions
2
provoking disagreements about representation (Zolberg, 1996; Gieryn, 1998; Lash,
2000). The controversy over the risk of movement receives scant attention.
Nevertheless, within the travelling exhibition, which is composed of exhibits moved
from abroad, controversy over the risk and the response toward it, such as ‘taking the
risk’ to travel or not (Lupton, 1999: 149-172), is therefore closely intertwined with
consideration of the exhibition’s representation. This research therefore aims to point
out the significance of the topic of risk relating to travel and international museum
exhibitions, by a case study of an outbound exhibition — ‘Splendors of Imperial
China’ — from the National Palace Museum in Taiwan to the museums in the US.
In 1996, the most dominant museum in Taiwan, the National Palace Museum in
Taipei, co-produced an exhibition entitled ‘Splendors of Imperial China’ with the
Metropolitan Museum in New York. This exhibition, composed of 475 of the NPM’s
exhibits, planned to travel to four large museums in the US, including the
Metropolitan Museum in New York, the National Galley in Washington, the Art
Institute in Chicago and the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Before ‘Splendors of
Imperial China’ travelled to the US, the most dramatic protest about museums ever
held in Taiwan was launched. The protest concerned the NPM’s violation of its own
loan policy in lending some fragile items — classified as restricted by the NPM itself,
though not by law — to US museums. It lasted nearly a month, provoking front-page
3
headlines across most Taiwanese newspapers in January 1996. The approximately 400
protesters were mainly university staff and students from fine arts and humanities
departments, politicians, artists, and cultural critics. Petitions of over 100,000
signatures arrived from all over Taiwan (Artist, 1996: 301-303).
Central to the whole controversy is the issue of risk of travel. This research
examines the discourses of the risk of travel, based on the related media reports 1 in
Taiwan and in the US during the protest period in January and February in 1996. In
general, the diverse discourses around this issue can be classified into two, one of
museum experts and the other of laymen. When museum experts at home and abroad
accept the risk of travel as governable by museum professions and coverable by
calculable insurance, laymen consider the national treasures as incommensurable and
the danger of its travel as beyond the measurement of insurance. When the museum
experts consider the travel to the US as a kind of risk-taking and a rare chance to make
the NPM a global brand, the laymen regard running that risk as a humiliating and
unwise act which simply places national treasures in untrustworthy US hands. The US
used to be the most significant diplomatic supporter of Taiwan, but the dispute over
risk created a peculiar confrontation between the two countries and not only
1
The seven newspapers that I examine are the United Daily News, the United Evening News,
Commercial Times, the China Times, the China Evening News, the Ming Shen-Bao and the Central
Daily News. I also analyse significant art magazines, including Hsiung Shih Art Monthly, Artists, CANs,
Modern Art Quarterly, Collection Magazine and Hotart Magazine. The general magazines that I
interrogate are the Journalist, Common Wealth, Leaders, United Literatures and Sinorama. Apart from
the reports in Taiwan, I also analyse the news reports on the New York Times, Time Magazine and CNN.
4
stimulated debate about national identity but also reclassified the national treasures of
Taiwan according to the risk of travel.
First of all, this paper examines the attempt by experts at home and abroad to cowrite the risk of travel. The museum has not yet become a completely globalised field
within which the perception of the risk of exhibits’ cross-national travel has reached a
mutual consensus. Instead, it was through the international travelling exhibition, under
the struggles between museums in different countries, that shared perception of risk
was reorganised and constructed. Therefore, I begin with investigating how the
National Palace Museum in Taipei constructed the risk of travel by making a restricted
list of its fragile collection. Then, I examine how, through co-producing ‘Splendors of
Imperial China’, the Metropolitan Museum in New York negotiated with the National
Palace Museum in Taipei and imposed another definition of the risk of travel on the
museum field in Taiwan. Second, I analyse the writing of risk of travel by laymen
from related cultural fields. By examining the protest discourses, I explore how the
construction of risk related to the reconstructed self and untrustworthy other. Third, I
examine how the traffic of museum objects through the International Travelling
Exhibition and the related discourses about its risk has become a significant technique
for classifying museum collections, strongly relating to the reconstruction of the value
of national treasures and the national community they represent. Also, I analyse how
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the state, supported by relatively impartial professionals, intervened to solve the
controversy surrounding the risk by governing and classifying the museum collection.
Museum Expert’s Writing of the Risk
Central to the controversy surrounding ‘Splendors of Imperial China’ is the NPM’s
‘restricted list’, whose creation, I suggest, was the beginning of the construction of the
risk. In 1984, to protect its collection, the NPM set the rule that several fragile items
of paintings and calligraphy cannot be shown in public more than forty days a year.
These exhibits were put on a 'restricted list', labelled as 'restricted exhibits', mainly
based on their fragility in terms of material and age, and quality in terms of historical
and aesthetic significance. They can be exhibited in the NPM only during October and
November, when the temperature and humidity are appropriate and national festivals
attract the most international VIPs (National Palace Museum, 1995).
In 1984, twenty exhibited were selected as restricted exhibits. In 1992, another
twenty exhibits were added in the list. By 1995, there were seventy all together
(Chang, 1996a). Every year only twenty pieces can be shown during October and
November. This restricted list became widely known to the general public in 1995,
when the NPM mounted a special exhibition to celebrate its seventieth anniversary,
named ‘Seventy Restricted Painting and Calligraphy Pieces’, which allowed seventy,
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rather than twenty, pieces to be shown at the same time. However, NPM experts
diagnosed their conserved items as fragile mainly based on the danger of exposing
these exhibits, without noticing that outlining the restricted list would actually define
the risk of their movement and cause the 1996 controversy. The NPM held a domestic
‘preview exhibition’ of ‘Splendors of Imperial China' before its US tour, through
which some visitors noticed that the NPM violated its own rule by including several
significant restricted exhibits (Chang, 1996b). This triggered the controversy over the
exhibition’s risk.
The ‘restricted list’ itself did not close the circuit of constructing the risk of
transnational mobile exhibitions. Instead, it is the encounter between the NPM and the
Met that anchored the motif of writing the risk. This power-laden encounter, I suggest,
was structured by the global museum field, whose operation is determined by the
specific forms of capital within it (Bourdieu, 1993). The Met houses a large high
quality collection that is the envy of most of the world’s museums (Hoving, 1993),
supported by top researchers in related areas who produce the most up to date
knowledge for exhibitions2, and equipped with advanced techniques in conservation
2
'Splendors of Imperial China' was mainly organised by members of the Met’s Department of Asian
Art. The main organisers, Fong and Watt, are Professor and a senior research fellow at Princeton
University, and consultative chairman and senior curator of the Met respectively. The research result,
the accompanying book, Possessing the Past, collects several essays by famous Chinese art historians
7
and preservation. Also, being situated in a global city attracting great numbers of
visitors and influential global media attention3, and easily attracting sponsorship4,
renders the Met as a museum among museums. Therefore, it becomes a powerful
magnet attracting numerous travelling exhibitions from around the world, and
performs as a world stage that museums in many corners of the world are bound to
connect to and have a presence on.
The NPM, housing also a large, high quality collection in the area of Chinese
art, has advanced conservation skills but is relatively poor in presenting exhibitions. It
is situated in a capital city, but in a peripheral country attracting fewer visitors and less
in the U.S. who were also the world’s leading historians of Chinese art (Fong and Watt, 1996: xii).
3
In New York, ‘Splendors of Imperial China’ received favourable reviews from over 300 news media
organisations (Chen and Wang, 1996). ‘Splendors of Imperial China’ in the Met was the most popular
exhibition in the world in 1996, attracting over 420,000 visitors. Its one year US tour altogether
attracted 880,000 visitors, which tripled the NPM’s 1990s average annual 200,000 foreign visitors in
Taipei (National Palace Museum, 1996).
4
In ‘Splendors of Imperial China’, besides the Taiwanese government, the Met had two potential
groups of sponsors. One was corporations with business in China, including Taiwanese and Chinese
corporations in the US and multinational corporations interested in the Chinese and Taiwanese markets.
The other was foundations interested in sponsoring international art and culture in the US (de
Montebello, 1996: viii). In addition, the Met’s own Foundation was a powerful financial supporter. It
became a flexible safety cushion that rendered sponsor-seeking less risky. When many sponsors
threatened to withdraw from the sponsor scheme due to the controversy aroused in Taiwan, the
Foundation was able to balance their withdrawals itself by up to $1.6 million (Solomon, 1996).
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global media attention. Compared to the Met, the NPM occupies a relatively
dominated position in the global museum field. This unequal distribution of museum
capital in the museum world not only triggered the US travel of ‘Splendors of Imperial
China’, but also intervened in the writing of the risk of its travel. That is, ‘Splendors
of Imperial China’’s international travel not only created cross-national contact
between the curatorial practices of the NPM and the Metropolitan Museum, but also
provided a battlefield for the struggle of different views, on which to reconstruct the
shared perception of the risk of museum exhibits’ travel.
For the Met, the leading figure of the museum world, choosing the exhibitions
from the museum abroad, like giving an award, was an offer of honour. Selecting the
best quality of museum items from other museums to fit the theme of the exhibition
was often taken for granted. As the main organiser of the ‘Splendor of Imperial
China’, Prof. Fong, said, ‘Since the aim of the exhibition is to demonstrate the
uniqueness and heritage of Chinese Culture and the potential of the museum of origin,
it is the best that should be shown’ (China Times, 10.1.1996).
Actually, controversy arising from the tug-of-war to borrow the best exhibits
(including the fragile ones) from foreign museums was not rare at all for the Met.
Mexico’s resistance to the Met's big Mexico Show, Italy's to its Vatican exhibition,
Greece's disagreement with the 'Greek Art of the Aegean Islands' (Solomon, 1996),
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and New Zealand's over the 'Maori' exhibition were all prominent controversial cases
among the Met’s ITEs (O'Biso, 1987).
For the Met as a host museum, law and insurance had already covered the
possibility of the risk of mobile exhibitions. For instance, on September 18, 1995, the
Federal Reporter announced that US law guaranteed that exhibited objects could not
be subject to government seizure while in the US for the exhibition. The exhibition
also received guarantees of compensation amounting to US$300 million from the US
federal government and the National Foundation for the Arts. In addition, the
Metropolitan also took out insurance worth US$700 million from Lloyd’s of London
(Solomon, 1996). Hence the possible danger of damage from movement of objects
and any possible threat encountered during the exhibition period had been turned into
a calculable risk from the Met's point of view.
For the NPM, travelling to the top US museums was considered an exceptional
chance to make it a global museum brand and display Taiwan’s national cultural
power. The writing of the risk through the creation of the ‘restricted list’ could
possibly be rewritten off under certain special conditions like this. The former director
of the Museum of History, Hao-tien Ho, expressed his support for letting the restricted
works go to America, considering this ITE as a worthy ‘risk-taking’,
10
I have organised exhibitions for 31 years. A show at four major American museums is a rare
opportunity. Just as sending troops to battle, sending cultural artefacts to exhibitions abroad
inevitably entails risk. However, doesn't the glory of history depend upon this kind of risk-
taking? (Lee, 1996b)
As a museum curator, Ho definitely disagrees that the collection can be pointlessly
destroyed, but he does express the museum’s eagerness to display its power in
significant moments and spaces. Underpinning this ‘potlatch’ (Benedict, 1983) is an
assumption that good representation requires taking the risk of sending precious
exhibits abroad.
The NPM’s Director also explained that his museum and the Met are situated in
very different positions in the global museum field. ‘Splendors of Imperial China’ is
taken as an instrument to upgrade the NPM’s position in the global museum field and
burnish Taiwan’s cultural image internationally. Therefore, the NPM itself could
agree to change its existing classification of its collection based on the risk
constructed and shown on the ‘restricted list’, to the new writing of risk that can be
covered by insurance and imposed by the Met. A powerful agent, such as the Met, can
therefore explicitly intervene in the process of constructing and furthermore redefine
the risk in the museum world.
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Laymen's Writing of the Risk — Constructing the US as an Unreliable Other
However, not everyone outside the NPM in Taiwan was convinced by the Met’s
definition of the risk of travel and its methods of dealing with this risk. Key agents for
the protest held different views on the issue. Nevertheless, they cannot be identified
merely as 'laymen', since no laymen without related interest, cultural capacity and
social authority can themselves articulate persuasive arguments. These key agents for
the protest were artists, MPs, university teachers and students in art-related
departments. Their past experiences in the field of museums or art, and their current
positions in politics, academia and the arts enabled them to speak with credibility on
this issue. Furthermore, most protest leaders were not easily identifiable as
conservative Chinese nationalists, such as the politicians or hardcore KMT loyalists.
Perhaps surprisingly, they were influential translators and introducers of western
cultural currents to Taiwan, therefore, their views look more broadly internationalist
than narrowly nationalistic. Thus, they hold even more authority to influence public
views on proper strategy toward ‘risky’ ITEs and furthermore engage in the struggle
of defining the risk in the museum field.
Ironically, the principal arguments during the protest about the ‘risk’ of ITEs
showed a strong tendency to bolster Chinese nationalism and ‘Otherise’ the US. For
12
these commentators, national treasures, to which the community attached strong
sentimental value, cannot be estimated by insurance calculations and are
incommensurable with other countries’ national treasures. No 'exchange rate' between
museums housing national treasures can decide the risk-taking practices of ITEs in the
competitive museum world. Especially, from their viewpoints, the value implied by
the NPM’s 'restricted list' highlighted the fragility and preciousness of those exhibits,
making their US journey incredibly dangerous. However, it is noted that these national
treasures are highly constructed, gaining people's attention only when this controversy
arose. That is, the protest provided a special chance to reconsider the value of the
national treasures and facilitate the reinforcement of national identity.
Central to the protest was the issue of moving fragile pieces across the national
boundary and placing them in the hands of foreign museums. Moreover, objectors
contended that the dominant Western museums had adopted an alternative logic of
ITE exchange as 'keeping-while-giving' (Weiner, 1992), which differs from the
outdated logic of exchange as 'potlatch' (Bennedict, 1983), suggested by the NPM and
the Met. In the past, Taiwan had excellent economic, diplomatic and cultural relations
with the US. This controversy aroused an unusual amount of disagreement with not
only the Met but also the US as a whole. That is, the debate about the risk of travelling
to the US offered another chance to write the risk, within which a difference was
13
created between Taiwan and the US as a blameworthy target for the possible risk.
I now examine the protesters’ alternative writing of the risk. Before ‘Splendors
of Imperial China' sailed to the US, the volatile debate about whether to allow this
move to the US demonstrated the uncertainty and insecurity about placing precious
exhibits in others’ hands. Concerns included how the Met would treat the exhibits, the
process of delivery, care and management during the display, the temporary custody
and the claim of ownership from third parties beyond the involved museums, and the
possibility that exhibits might be reproduced. There was further uncertainty as to
whether the items’ ‘true’ value would be recognised in another cultural context.
First of all, the uncertainty of the travel starts from the process of delivery to a
foreign country. One significant metaphor to describe the travel of fragile museum
pieces to the US was 'an old man's travel abroad by plane'. When the NPM curators
argued that travel would not bother healthy old men (Chang, 1996c), the protesters
considered that travel can kill unhealthy old men. One famous music conservator
among the protesters argues that the cultural treasure is priceless, so no decent cultural
guardians would see risking such travel as an appropriate strategy:
People need to be humble in front of cultural treasures... Contracts are temporary, but, culture
lasts forever... The significance of ancient objects lies in their rarity and irreplaceability (Lee,
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1996b).
For him, damage from the process of delivery simply cannot be made good by the
contractural insurance coverage. Here, the travel was constructed as lethal to any old
cultural treasures. In the protest, another prominent metaphor was the funeral. On the
stage of the protest, protesters wore black clothes with white headscarves, and many
white clothes were hung at the protest as part of a requiem ritual for the treasures.
Furthermore, several committed protesters stayed up for several nights in turn,
performing the seminal part of the traditional Chinese funeral ritual to express sincere
laments for deceased close family members (Chang and Choi, 1996). The funeral
performance mentioned above shows that for these protesters, sending the fragile
exhibits abroad was tantamount to sending ancestors' treasure to death.
Second, the risk of exposing the exhibits to display in US museums is another
central issue of debate. The NPM's rule limiting public display of the fragile exhibits
to forty days a year reveals the dilemma between conservation and display. To reduce
the exhibition’s total displaying days on its US tour was one of the protesters’ major
demands (Lu, 1996). They also worried about the humidity and lighting control, and
the amount of time packages would be open while transferring between US museums
(14.1.1996, China Times, quoted from Sinorama). Moreover, objectors highlighted the
15
damage possible from exposure under media filming. They raised the past experience
of the NPM's reproduction project operated by Japanese museum experts as an
example to demonstrate the possibility of foreign media endangering exhibits in order
to make good quality reproductions (Chu, 1996).
In fact, the displaying of the fragile exhibits in the US was considered much
more dangerous than displaying them domestically. For example, on the NPM's
seventieth birthday in 1995, the large scale display of restricted fragile pieces was
appreciated and caused no controversy (Chang, 1996a). One disagreement highlighted
in the protest was the contract between the NPM and the Met that privileged foreign
media much more than domestic in photographing and filming the exhibited NPM
collection (Chang, 1996).
Following the above discussion, the third central debate surrounding the risks of
the travelling exhibition was the risk of possible reproduction by the Met's high
technology and the risk of losing ownership over the exhibits by third party claims.
During the Taipei protests, the New York Times reported:
The rumors flew: the Metropolitan Museum would lock the Chinese treasures in its basement
and send back cleverly made copies; President Clinton would give the art back to the mainland.
The United States Congress's guarantee of protection for foreign cultural treasures, someone
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asserted, was no more reliable than the diplomatic relationship with Taiwan it had terminated in
1978 (Solomon, 1996).
The discourses of the risk of travel, emphasising the possibility of losing control
or ownership that sending the exhibits involved, showed distrust toward the Met as a
reliable professional conservator and the legal system in the US as a guarantee system.
Also, the perception of the risk is less a rational and cognitive result than an
accumulated effect of collective memories (Lash, 2000). During the protest, the artists
who used to live in the US mentioned their bad experiences with US galleries
(Solomon, 1996). The protesters also suggested that the 1979 breakage of the
diplomatic relationship between the US and Taiwan had already confirmed US
guarantees as untrustworthy (Solomon, 1996).
In addition to the concern over possible physical damage of the exhibits, another
uncertainty lies in that the value of Taiwan’s national treasures might not be
recognised properly in the US. If this was the case, the risk-taking became farcical
rather than a meaningful cultural exchange. On a protest platform, the leading
protester, famous art critic Rung-Chi Liu, recited loudly a fax sent from a well-known
Taiwanese writer and critic Dr. Yin-Tai Lung, director of Taipei’s Bureau of Culture
1999-2002, who then lived in Germany:
17
The NPM makes no sense at all, especially in their servile flattering of the world. One German
saying can be quoted as a comment here, that is, ‘casting pearls before swine' (Chang and Choi,
1996).
‘Pearl’ and ‘swine’ are two very extremely contrasting metaphors used by Lung to
describe the treasure of the NPM and American visitors. This rather bigoted quote
implies that the value of the national treasure of Taiwan could never be appreciated by
the US public. Therefore, taking the best to show to those who cannot appreciate it is a
wasteful and nonsensical act. By this discourse, a distinction between Americans and
Taiwanese was clearly delineated, classifying Americans as culturally inferior. To
some extent, the perception of the risk of travelling to the US is less a cognitive than
an aesthetic one (Lash, 1998). Thus, her assumption was clearly that taking the risk of
sending the exhibits to the US was an unequal exchange, flattering the US and looking
down upon the position of the NPM itself and the culture it represents. Quoting a
German saying, Dr. Lung actually appropriated a 'European structure', one considered
a higher international symbolic authority based on her own experiences and
viewpoint, to criticise the NPM's and Met's practice.
In fact, these protesters articulated a persuasive alternative logic for dealing with
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international cultural exchange — exchange with other countries while keeping
essential inalienable exhibits at home: that is, the 'keeping-while-giving' exchange
(Weiner, 1985). Though the above discourses of risk tend to be rather nationalistic,
these protesters presented their argument to the Taiwanese public with an
internationalist flavour, equipped with their knowledge of foreign cultures and past
experiences of living in foreign countries. One editorial essay in the United News
during the period of protests can summarise the new international trend of ‘keepingwhile-giving’, which backs up some rather nationalist discourses mentioned in the
above quotes:
Today, the big museums in the world have set the convention that the most important works
will never leave the museum they are situated in. Visitors should view the works by going to
the museum. Only by so doing can the national cultural characteristics and dignity be built and
maintained (United Daily News, 1996b).
This demonstrates that the protestors based their views on international sources, that
is, 'keeping-while-giving' was considered less a narrow nationalistic action than an
advanced international current trend accepted by dominant museums. Also, when
museum curators consider the ‘Splendors of Imperial China’’s US travel as a worthy
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‘risk-taking’, the protesters rather regard that the travel of fragile items as too risky for
any great museums to run. Through this legitimate source, the discourses on the risk
by these protestors could compete with experts’ writing of the risk of travelling
exhibitions.
Constructing Taiwan's 'Mona Lisa'
When the protest in Taiwan against ‘Splendors of Imperial China’ travelling abroad
arose, the US media also reported it. Some sympathetic reports described the fragile
treasures in the NPM as ‘inalienable wealth’ to the Taiwanese people as the Liberty
Bell is to Americans (Jenkins, 1996). However, the facts were more complicated than
this. The NPM’s 'inalienable' treasures were actually more a product created by this
volatile campaign than well-known national treasures that were recognised as such
before the protest. Before the campaign, neither the names nor the value of the twentyseven fragile pieces had been recognised by most of the general public in Taiwan
(Hsu, 1996).
In fact, during the period of this controversy, the names of the restricted
paintings suddenly became key words in the news that must be known. How to
appreciate these paintings became a hot issue. During the campaign, the protest stage
was suddenly turned into a temporary outdoor classroom giving a short but intense
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Chinese art history course about the treasures. Protestors even called it 'art lectures on
the street' to signal their desire to render the art accessible to the people (Huang,
1996). It was also the first time that the mass media in Taiwan, including the leading
newspapers and general magazines, devoted a large number of reports to the NPM’s
collection. These reports were not only about the controversy as news, shown on
headlines, crossing the pages from cultural news to social news, but also told the story
of each of the twenty-seven restricted exhibits as well as the historical and aesthetic
values of the NPM’s collection. Many special issues, such as ‘Essential guide to the
twenty-seven restricted pieces' and ‘In-depth tour of the NPM’s fragile national
treasures’, had been made (The United Daily News, 1996; Commercial Times, 1996;
Collection Magazine, 1996; Hotart, 1996). Related general public lectures about these
exhibits were also launched as the controversy arose (Lee, 1996c).
The general public's interest toward these paintings was suddenly aroused. As
one famous art historian and cultural critic recalled, during the period of protest, even
when taking a taxi, he was asked by a curious taxi driver 'how to appreciate the beauty
of the "Travellers amid streams and mountains'" (Hsu, 1996). Since taxi drivers are
often considered remote from the museum field in Taiwan, their knowing the name of
this specific painting in the restricted list and their deep interest in the painting
demonstrated that the event was powerful in making the public acknowledge the value
21
of national treasures. To some extent, through 'Splendors of Imperial China'
controversy over the risk of exhibition’s international travel that opened up the
possibility of constructing the 'essential' national treasures and letting the Taiwanese
public recognise their values.
Moreover, after a month’s campaigning, the twenty-seven restricted paintings,
unfamiliar to the Taiwanese public before the controversy, were standing out from the
whole collection of the NPM as 'the essential collection'. These selected exhibits
shown in the US were specially labelled as award winners when they were shown
again in the NPM after they triumphantly returned home from their American journey.
Within the whole collection, the original 475 pieces selected by the Met and NPM for
‘Splendors of Imperial China' exhibition were among the best known of the nation’s
precious treasures. Some other pieces were not that presentable, and were rather
difficult to fit into the exhibition’s theme or less visually attractive and historically
valuable, so had been left at home in the NPM.
The dramatic protest against the museum experts’ policy on the exhibition’s
overseas travel was finally settled by selected, relatively impartial experts who
decided which paintings could go to the US and which ones should stay. It was the
state’s intervention to define the risk by governing the museum collection as national
treasures, supported by relatively impartial groups of experts in Taiwan. The precious
22
pieces judged as "non-movers' were actually classified as the top treasures among the
whole NPM collection. Even the New York Time’s weekly magazine took the photo
of one ‘non-mover’ exhibit as the cover satirically titled: ‘The painting you cannot see
in the Met’s exhibition’. Hence, I suggest that the outbound ITEs, such as 'Splendors
of Imperial China', provided the opportunity for the museum to re-classify their
collection. The controversy over the issue of the risk to some extent revalorise the
exhibits classified as ‘non-movers’.
Indeed, no discourses of national identity building can avoid being challenged.
Since the outbound travelling exhibition involves the politics of representation of the
national community abroad, it sometimes enflames issues of national identity. Apart
from the contest on the representation, the debates over the risk of travel also
reconstructed the national treasures along the delineation between mobile and
immobile treasures and draw people’s attentions on the immobile national treasures.
During the period of protest, many Taiwanese independence supporters suggested
other items as authentic ‘rooted’ Taiwanese national treasures that were different from
these ‘moveable’ Chinese national treasures moved from China to Taiwan’s NPM in
the 1940s (Huang, 1996). Some art and cultural magazines even intended constructing
the treasures that might represent authentic Taiwanese culture against these
controversial NPM items by interviewing and surveying artists and scholars involved
23
in different fields of Taiwanese cultural conservation (Huang, 1996).
I have so far explored how the risk of the outbound ITE is constructed. First, the
‘restricted list’ embodied the NPM staff’s construction of danger, which was later
written off under the struggle with the Met and replaced by calculable risk
management imposed by the Met. Then, I described how the Taiwanese cultural
intermediaries who had authority but outside the museum field engaged in the debate
about the risk of travel by organising the protest. I argue that the debate over risk
shaped the division of self and other. Accordingly, the outbound ITE creates the
specific moment to delineate the boundary by arousing confrontation and modifying
the content of national identity, meanwhile reclassifying the museum collection and
valorising the national treasures.
Since the ITE was a struggle between museums in the global museum field, the
power structure within the museum field delimits the writing of risk in the travelling
exhibition. Powerful museums can impose their views of calculation and management
of risk upon other museums by changing less powerful museums’ policies, finally
reinforcing the unequal logic of the museum field. However, ironically, the risk issue
might generate great emotional energy and stimulate controversies like large-scale
protests and demonstrations, which can make even the grandest museum exhibition a
hot potato for dominant museums to handle.
24
The ITE can also be a bridge, which connects while separating (Simmel, 1997).
When museums strategically associate cross-nationally, they reach a shared logic of
operation, perception of the danger, and calculation and management of the risk. At
the same time, the risk creation arouses boundary making and bolsters disconnection.
The interplay between globalisation and nationalisation, apparent in the complicated
outbound ITE, shows that the discourses of risk could render the disconnection an
alternative logic of cross-national exchanges that is globally acknowledged and
accepted.
Conclusion
By analysing the discourses of different social groups on the issue of risk in a
controversial outbound international travelling exhibition, this paper argues that the
risk of international travelling exhibition is a constructed result based on the
museums’ struggle within the global museum field. To be present in the powerful
museums, museums in the peripheral countries can ‘take the risk’ and write off its
own definition of the risk. Museum experts’ consensus regarding risk through contact
in the international travelling exhibition accepted that the risk can be covered by
insurance and the law.
However, I also demonstrate that the museum collection that refers to national
25
belongings invests symbolic meaning to the public. The pieces’ risk of movement out
of the national boundaries could then be considered difficult to be covered by the
guarantee of law and insurance accepted in the museum field. In the layman’s
discourse of ITE risk, several dimensions have been emphasised: the delivery, the
exposure, the control of ownership in the reproduction, and the recognition of the
value of the collection. This study shows that when writing about the risk, the cultural
intermediates actually delineate the self and other. By these intermediates’ definition,
others cannot be trusted to handle the precious national treasure.
To solve the controversy, the museum collection was re-identified and
reclassified, according to the risk of travel adjudged by the accepted impartial experts.
That is, the controversy stimulated the new need to govern the national treasures in
order to settle the writing of the risk. Instead of arguing that the construction of risk is
only discursive, I suggest that in the competition of discourse between museum
experts and laymen in terms of ‘potlatch’ and ‘keeping-while-giving’, both
appropriated legitimate international cultural resources. Though the controversy over
the risk could make the international travelling exhibition a hot potato even for the
most dominant museum in the world, the final anchor of the writing of risk still cannot
be done without another group of experts who can be trusted as capable of judging the
risk of the collection. Moreover, rather than arguing that the risk of travel is realistic
26
and the value of the national treasure is self-evident, I argue that the controversy over
the risk of travel implicitly offered the chance to create the value of the national
collection. Those fragile pieces on the restricted list that used to be neglected by the
public suddenly become the most ‘inalieneable national treasure’, with most of the
general public recognising its value.
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