The Ideal Museum
When I paused in the East Asian exhibition hall of the Burrell Collection, the Chinese Eastern Zhou bronze tapir, placed with Bronze Dog, became the metaphorical starting point of my research in stage 3. This dislocation of cross-cultural understanding leads me to question: When an artifact is removed from its original context, renamed, and recategorized, what does it represent? This ritual vessel, originally used for sacrificial purposes in ancestral temples, became a spectacle of animal-shaped decorative elements in cross-cultural exhibitions.
From this trip, I began to rethink the definition of a museum. Is it an authority for knowledge, a space for people to wander and explore, or a place for diversity and cultural understanding? As a public institution preserving and disseminating culture, a museum’s “communication method” is worth re-questioning. After this field trip, I also put forward the proposition of “ideal museum” and made it my core project direction.
