Chinese artefacts and repatriation in Britain and Canada
What is a museum? According to emeritus professor of museum development Graham Black, museums are memory-constructing spaces and centers for collective knowledge. Artefacts contain memories of people from past civilizations who made and used them. Objects serve cultural memory in a variety of ways and functions, revealing important information about their users and makers. However, many of these artefacts are no longer found in their countries of origin, where they could serve to educate the current members of their civilization. Instead, through various methods of calculation, exploitation, and collection disguised as souvenirs taken by well-meaning Western benefactors, artefacts are scattered across the globe where they should not be. In this article, I will look at the Royal Ontario Museum and the British Museum as national museums that build a collective narrative while ignoring the original contexts of artefact acquisition, focusing specifically on Chinese artefacts.
Let’s look closely at our very own Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto. Founding director Charles Trick Currelly enthused in his memoir I Brought The Ages Home that he was able to buy large shipments of Chinese artefacts from dealer George Crofts, alongside acquisitions from missionary Bishop William White. What he does not mention is the questionable practices used to acquire such artefacts, such as engaging with backwater ‘curio dealers’ while North China was in a vulnerable political and economic state. Similarly, the ROM’s official promotional material does not mention the shady background behind its artefacts. A video talking about the acquisition and preservation of the Chinese mosaic “The Paradise of Maitreya” (1271-1368) by Zhu Haogu discusses its transportation to the ROM in fragmented sections and its painting restoration. However, Currelly’s memoir notes that Bishop White acquired the artefact via a Chinese monastery selling the mosaic to avoid starvation, a dubious origin that was not mentioned in the video nor the ROM’s official website. This raises questions about how an artefact’s origins are ignored to create a harmonious narrative for a national museum.
Another example is the British Museum in London. In his article China in Britain: the imperial collections, Oxford professor Craig Clunas touches upon the concept of “possessive individualism,” claiming that museum collections of different objects (both indigenous and international) validate a state’s claim to sovereignty. He notes that, although we would like to pretend Chinese objects in Britain have an untouchable status, curators impose their own bias onto these objects. By collecting non-British things, the British vision as well as its power are expanded. Clunas also mentions how Chinese signs of traditional ownership (i.e. crowns, scepters, etc.) were seen as more valuable and beautiful than modern items created after the end of Qing rule, which coincided with the end of WWI in Britain. I believe this demonstrates nostalgia for the British colonial period, as the vanishing British empire frantically holds on to souvenirs of Chinese royal extravagance to remind them of what they once had. Through national museums, Western governments can reminisce about the extravagance and splendor of royal artefacts in other cultures. At the same time, they can establish the superiority of European progress and maintain a post-colonial moral high ground.
Acknowledging that artefacts are displaced and wrongly decontextualized as national treasures in the present day raises a question: how do we ensure they are returned to their rightful cultures? Social media reception on this topic has been divided. A Chinese video drama series went viral on TikTok in 2023, made by two Chinese social media influencers, called Escape from the British Museum. A jade teapot in the British Museum is turned into a woman, who enlists the help of a Chinese journalist to help her return to China. Centuries-old artefacts are portrayed as synonymous, and having a close relationship, with the modern Chinese identity; the teapot quotes that “Anyone with black eyes, yellow skin, and who understands what I say is family.” The Chinese state media has done the same, calling for the British government to repatriate Chinese cultural relics. On the other hand, a common argument that was exhibited on Reddit for the British Museum to keep Chinese artefacts notes the destruction of many Chinese artefacts during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Some netizens argue that it is unfair for China to demand their artefacts back now, when it destroyed so many of them in the 1950s. However, I believe that this argument is unfair: artefacts from China are still from China, and that is a fact that cannot be diminished.
The next time you step into the ROM’s China galleries, instead of taking an artefact’s description at face value, try to think about who wrote the description and who put the artefact there.