Valuable Collections Moved Out in Preparation for National Museum Expansion

620,000 cultural items were moved out in batches from the National Museum of China to two temporary storehouses within two-month time, from December 11, 2006 to February 15, 2007, in preparation for a big expansion project.[第一段]     

Collective memory and research-led filmmaking: Spatial legacies of dictatorship in the Dominican Republic

ABSTRACT

This article explores theoretical-methodological challenges in researching the formation of collective memory in the wake of dictatorship. The worldwide growth of memory sites suggests space crystallizes memory into stable formations. However, rather than monolithic discourses, environments attest to complex processes of memorialization and willful amnesia. I propose that research-led filmmaking can draw out spaces’ heterogeneous “stories in waiting.” Through the documentary After Trujillo, which revisits memory sites and ruins of Rafael Trujillo’s dictatorship from 1930 to 1961 in the Dominican Republic, I assess how working at the interface between research and film can (a) probe space’s testimonial capacity; (b) engage audiences in public debates about violent pasts; and (c) stimulate sustainable discussions through online platforms. Given that films still lack recognition as academic outputs, at stake here is the claim that creative methodologies constitute “a form of research” and “detectable research outputs.”     

Museums for the many? Rhetorical optimism and the failure of sustained political will at three London government-funded museums – then and now

ABSTRACT

This article contends that there are considerable similarities between nineteenth- and twenty-first-century aspirations for museums – not least, in respect to promises of “museums for the many”. Despite contemporary policy makers of different political allegiances embracing similar rhetorics, in general they appear to have had little interest in reflecting on previous realities. This article focuses on attendances at three national museums, in particular the British Museum, the National Gallery and, the Victoria & Albert Museum (formerly, the South Kensington Museum) over two periods: from the early 1850s to the late 1880s, and from the late 1970s to the present. It interrogates those and other institutions’ visit data for evidence of whether they did, indeed, deliver to “the many”. It questions the commitment of state-supported museums to those target audiences, both then and now.     

An Attempt to Rescue Traditional Culture

On November 8, an exhibition on the replicas of lost painting and calligraphic masterpieces, used to be part of the Qing court collection, opened in the National Library of China. This one-month exhibition was co-organized by the collection connoisseurship committee of China Cultural Relics Soceity and Liaoning Provincial Museum. During the exhibition, the reporter interviewed Mr. Li Chun, curator of this exhibition.[第一段]     

NATIONAL GALLERY EXHIBITS NEW YEAR PAINTINGS

The National Art Museum of China opened an exhibition to display its collection of New Year painting masterpieces prior to the Spring Festival 2008, or Chinese New Year.     

The Art of Brush Strokes Sun Xiaoyun and Her Calligraphy Works

Sun Xiaoyun was born in a calligrapher family and began learning calligraphy at age 3. Upon graduation from junior middle school, like millions of youngsters during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), she was sent to the countryside to be "re-educated" by farmers and afterwards served in the army for 8 years. Except two years of training in jiangsu Chinese Painting Academy, Sun mastered skills of calligraphy virtually by self-study. From the late 1970s, Sun extensively studied works of man…     

Strategic Narratives in US Public Diplomacy: A Critical Geopolitics

The United States has historically held a unique, complex, and dynamic relationship to international geopolitical space. From the Monroe Doctrine to Cold War demarcations such as containment and détente, the United States has sought to define its geopolitical position in relation to other nations through narratives which have served as popular reference points for interpreting shifts in international power relations. Why, then, is it unable to produce a compelling story of geopolitical space for the 21st century? This article examines historical examples of geopolitical discourse used by the United States in promoting its foreign policies in order to explore the question of why post-9/11 narratives have failed to successfully build upon narratives of popular struggle against the Soviet Union. There are, however, historical examples which suggest possible directions for rejuvenation.     

The city as extracurricular space: re‐instituting urban pedagogy in South Asia

Abstract

This paper addresses the pedagogic and disciplinary challenges posed by the effort to understand urban spatial practices and institutional histories in Bombay/Mumbai, and other postcolonial South Asian cities. Many cities in the region, such as Chandigarh and Dhaka were designed as iconic of the abstract space of the nation‐state. The dominance of the nationalist spatial imagination in the understandings of public space, citizenship, and the metropolitan environment – combined with the functionalist perception of architecture and spatial practice – have resulted in an urban pedagogy that regards the city only as a technological or physical artefact. Architectural education and urban pedagogy is therefore unable to address the diversity of social‐spatial formations in the city, and its political regime of predatory development, tactical negotiation, and blurry urbanism. To better understand this new regime, we require a collaborative urbanism that treats the city as an extra‐curricular space by which we can reconstruct existing institutional frameworks. Drawing on the work of CRIT (Collective Research Initiatives Trust), Mumbai, this papers explores the post‐industrial landscapes of the Mumbai Mill and Port Lands as a case study in two extracurricular research projects, which grew into urban design and community planning interventions in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, where urban spaces became the arena for re‐imagining the relations between knowledge production, institutional boundaries, and civic activism on which nationalism has imposed a long estrangement.     

Grease and Sweat: Race and Smell in Eighteenth-Century English Culture

From 1690 to 1800 texts printed in England linked racial difference and foul odour through understandings of occupation, food, cosmetics and sweat. Even by the end of the eighteenth-century racial odour was represented as a labile, culturally and environmentally determined characteristic. This article traces how the social ‘use’ of olfactory stereotypes, particularly their links with cosmetics, food, and odorous spaces, determined the mobilization of explanations for and attitudes to racial scent. It argues that ideas of race should not be considered monolithic or described in terms of narratives that posit a divide between the body/culture, but that racial stereotypes should be understood as collections of traits, of which smell was one, with distinctive histories.     

From the Sacral to the Moral

ABSTRACT

This article examines sleeping practices and their spiritual meanings in English society. Sleep is one of the most fundamental experiences of everyday life, and this article examines how its temporal and spatial dimensions were shaped by a wide range of confessional groups according to theologies of salvation and resurrection from 1660 to 1700. The practices, rituals and objects that surrounded and sanctified the bedside highlight distinctive forms of sleep-piety that were supported by shifts in the provision and use of domestic space, by the pastoral objectives of Church divines and dissenting ministers, and by a flourishing genre of published spiritual guides that promoted private household devotions. This comparative study of sleeping practices nuances existing historical narratives about the fragmented religious landscape of these years. Most importantly, however, it offers a justification of the centrality of pious sleeping routines to the everyday experience of devotional practice by tracing the ways in which religious beliefs were embodied through subjective physical performances of sleep.     

A Cluster of Museums Boosts Nantong＇s Reputation

This year marks the 100^th anniversary of Nantong Museum, known as the earliest modern museum in China. In the new era, it now enjoys its heyday, with a vast collection of artifacts and newly-renovated facilities.     

CHINA NATIONAL GRAND THEATRE TO OPEN

On September 25 when Chinese people celebrated their traditional festivity -- the Mid-Autumn Festival, China National Grand Theatre, after nearly six years of construction, has its true face unveiled to the public. Lit up by spotlight at night, the huge egg-shell-shaped structure stood tall like a shining pearl amidst the rippled pool.     

Reinventing Nagasaki: the Christianization of Nagasaki and the revival of an imperial legacy in postwar Japan

This paper explores how Nagasaki was reinvented from an imperial city to an “International Cultural, Christian city” and elicits the continuity of Japanese imperialism in postwar Nagasaki as well as the discontinuity between the war and postwar periods in the city. The paper seeks to determine what history and whose memory have been excluded or erased in the process of remaking Nagasaki into an international Christian city; it examines the particular historical and political conditions that enabled Nagai Takashi, Urakami Catholics and Kitamura Seibou’s Memorial Peace Statue to symbolize Nagasaki’s atomic bomb memory and postwar city identity as an “International Christian city” that “prays.” While Nagai is widely known as a spiritual, religious leader in postwar Nagasaki/Japan, and Kitamura’s Peace Memorial statue dominates Nagasaki’s commemoration space, this paper analyses how US dominance over Japan enabled the country to rehabilitate its imperial past and to revive the imperial legacy by appropriating the GHQ’s (General Headquarters of the Allied Powers’) demilitarization and Christianization policies. It argues that Nagasaki’s postwar reconstruction signifies the failure of what Kuan-Hsing Chen (2010 Chen, Kuan-Hsing. 2010. Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization. Durham and London: Duke University Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) calls the “deimperialization” of Japanese consciousness and subjectivity.     

Island of Music Embraces National Violin Competition

The 8th National Violin Performance Competition, under the auspices of Chinese Cultural Ministry and sponsored and organized by Qingdao Municipality, took place in the city of Qingdao from September 17 to 26. 87 contestants from a dozen of prestigious music conservatories from across the country competed in the final round, presenting high-level art galas to this beautiful seaside city.     

Book Review of "The Image Factory: Consumer Culture,Photography and the Visual Content Industry," by Paul Frosh

Computer games such as JFK Reloaded and 9-11 Survivor not only aim at an accurate documentation of particular events—such as the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the Twin Towers attack—but also at the playful re-enactment of these traumatic events. In this article, I discuss whether the phrase "documentary computer games" is useful in defining these games. These "docu-games" try to combine the facts of documentaries and the fiction of computer games—elements that seem hard to reconcile at first sight. Do these games create a harmonious "space of communication" in which feelings of mutual understanding occur between designers and players?     

Chinese Art in the Cernuschi Museum

After the three and half years of facelift, the Cemuschi Museum ,was finally reopened one year ago.Guided by Mr. Gilles Beguin, director of the museum, we visited the museum which has the second largest collection of Asian art in France, only next to Museum Guimet.[第一段]     

Cross-dressing as whitewashing: the Kimono Wednesdays protests and the erasure of Asian/American bodies

ABSTRACT

During the summer of 2015, a series of events at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston called Kimono Wednesdays encouraged visitors to try on a replica of the kimono Claude Monet's wife wore in her husband's 1876 painting La Japonaise and then pose for photos in front of the painting. This seemingly benign act of appreciation sparked protests from those who considered the events as perpetuating an exoticizing imperialist gaze and orientalizing stereotypes. This paper contextualizes this controversy by examining the history of white women cross-dressing as Japanese, how it constitutes a form of naturalized whitewashing linked to the pleasure of consumption through its connections to Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado (1885), and how the same act for Asian American women at the turn into the twentieth century is fraught with the anxiety of racial identity suppression.     

Distinction on the box: Cultural capital and the social space of broadcasting

The literature on cultural capital has had relatively little to say about television viewing, except insofar as television has served as a negative point of reference in relation to which other cultural practices register their distinctiveness. This article, by contrast, examines the respects in which practices of distinction are operative within the space of broadcast television. Looking first at the ‘internal economy’ of television as expressed in the relations between genre, programme and channel preferences, it then examines how these preferences are related to occupational class, gender, level of education and ethnicity. While showing that divisions within the space of broadcasting are most powerfully articulated in terms of age and gender, the article also shows that occupational class and level of education play important roles in stratifying television audiences along traditional ‘high’/‘low’ lines. A closer analysis of the relations between these variables reveals more complex patterns of distinction, particularly in the place occupied by ‘new drama’ and ‘new comedy’ in the preferences of younger, well-educated viewers.     

Revel,Riot and Rebellion and The Social History of Politics

ABSTRACT

This article considers the ties between soldiers and civilian life in First World War Britain. Previous assumptions about soldierly alienation and disillusionment from civilian society have been questioned in recent years. This article adds to this discussion by examining the part played by National War Aims Committee propaganda in fostering links between soldiers and the home front. Representation of civilian activities, community, rurality and domesticity offered reassurance that Britain remained largely the same as soldiers remembered. The involvement of soldiers as propagandists also shows that attitudes cannot be deduced solely from the perspective of literary depictions of alienation.     

Space and the City

ABSTRACT

Influenced by interdisciplinary studies and the ‘spatial turn’ in social history, this article explores the relationship between space and the construction of gender identity amongst the poor to middling sorts of seventeenth-century Norwich. To this end I have considered gendered interaction in different ‘types' of space: domestic, private space, ‘borderline’ space – such as the alehouse or threshold – and, finally, the public space of streets and markets. Each section explores the relevance of recent spatial historiography in the Norwich context, and evaluates whether men and women inhabited different ‘worlds' in the city, not only in terms of their physical movement or access to certain places but also, more importantly, in terms of how their presence was perceived, and thus their identity shaped by others. The empirical basis is primarily defamation depositions of the Norwich Diocese Court, largely used by the middling sorts, contextualized where appropriate with secular court records.