‘Woodblock Prints in Distinct Lands’ is an exhibition including both Qing Dynasty New Year Woodblock Prints and Japanese Ukiyo-e shown in the National Art Museum of China. With over 100 pieces selected from the collection, this exhibition displays the differences and similarities of the two in terms of their origins, craftsmanship, distribution and styles. There are 138 artworks in this exhibition, 75 works are Japanese Ukiyo-e and 61 are from the Qing Dynasty. Among totally 1000 square meters exhibition halls, ‘Woodblock Prints in Distinct Lands’ leads audiences to explore Chinese and Japanese aesthetic tastes, psychological appeals and national spirit through four progressive parts. This essay will analyze the design of the ‘Woodblock Prints in Distinct Lands’ exhibition. It will focus on its context, inside space and audiences’ experience.
The exhibition venue of ‘Woodblock Prints in Distinct Lands’ is the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) which is a traditional Chinese temple in Beijing, the capital of China. With more than 100 thousand pieces of collections from ancient time till today, NAMOC has missions of bringing great art to the public. In this exhibition, all artworks on display are from the museum’s collection to show different social functions as well as artistic traditions between Japan and China to provide a place of education and academia. As Greenhill’s (1992, p.2) statement, “the educational role of museums is claimed as a major justification.”, this exhibition summarizes the history and the influences between Chinese and Japanese woodblock prints on the one side of the pathway wall of this exhibition which indicates the educational role of NAMOC. However, the exhibition venue as a form of Temple also has the function of politics. The actual function of museums is reforming public manners (Bennett, 1995, p.90). This exhibition can be regarded as a tool for enhancing friendship between China and Japan. Therefore, the exhibition of ‘Woodblock Prints in Distinct Lands’ undertaken by NAMOC not only provide public with a platform of learning but also provide moral guidance for a friendly bilateral relationship between two countries.
This exhibition has three exhibition rooms on one floor and is divided into four different parts of the theme. Each room has a specific design style. For the exhibition hall 19 which is also the entering room of this exhibition, the color of the wall is deep grey. Using the projection as well as printings to make the preface wall, this exhibition made efforts to create a multimedia model for the starting. On the back of the preface wall, the curator worked through the relations of Chinese woodblock prints, Japanese Ukiyo-e and western paintings. In the exhibition hall 20, the wall is in crimson colour which creates an atmosphere of Chinese New Year. The rectangular arch simulates the courtyard gate of a traditional Chinese family and tries to rebuild the initial environment of New Year Woodblock Prints. For the last room, exhibition hall 21, the wall is dark green and the partition boards were made into circular and octagonal arches. The exhibition contains folding screens and similar design of traditional Chinese garden which conforms to features of the Yellow Box in general: possibility of closing artworks and folding screens (Chang, 2005, pp.8–26 ). The form of the Yellow Box appropriately shows the same and differences of Chinese and Japanese culture as well as artistic style and combines the two culture in this curatorial way.
The lighting system of this exhibition includes ceiling spotlights with wall-mounted tracks and ceiling tubes. Only the exhibition hall 19 has no ceiling tube as this room can get light through the windows from the entrance. Frame type of artworks is all light wood thin frames so that it can highlight the elegant and classical beauty of Asian woodblock prints. Labellings of this exhibition mainly consist of three forms. One is basic labelling next to each artwork with name, artist and size on it. One is artists’ information or related content of woodblock prints with white characters stuck directly on the wall. Another is the introduction for different parts of the exhibition, each introduction is a piece of rice paper attached on the wall with black-color characters and the order of the characters is according to the order of historical books. Rice paper as a major ‘canvas’ for traditional Chinese and Japanese paintings meets artistic conception of artworks and the theme of this exhibition. Additionally, the font in this exhibition is a regular script which is generally used in formal occasions and literary works.
Most pointedly, retaining columns in the hall have been skillfully applied in this exhibition to create corridors and are also as partitions of different sections. There are several approaches this exhibition indicates connecting columns, such as setting a folding screen, building partition boards to exhibit extra artworks and creating corridors as well as archways. Connecting walls between columns are movable which successfully makes an exhibition more flexible and may increase visitors’ experience joy.
In addition, the exhibition of ‘Woodblock Prints in Distinct Lands’ has evoked audiences’ emotion by its design of the storyline. This exhibition consists of four parts with different themes. The first part is called "Homology and Rheology” which mainly shows the important influence of Chinese Qing Dynasty's Woodblock Prints on Japanese Ukiyo-e paintings, as well as the spread and influence of Woodblock prints among the world. The second part called “Figures and Style", revealing the similarities and differences between Ukiyo-e painting and Chinese New Year Woodblock prints in terms of distinct theme selection and image creation. The third part is “Skill and Audiences", which reorganizes the various technical forms of Ukiyo-e and Chinese New Year pictures in the development process. The last part, ”Production and Distribution”, presents the characteristics of two art forms in the publishing industry. According to Dernie (2006, pp.2-13), creating a storyline is an essential way of evoking audiences and it aims to let visitors break away to explore the exhibition more deeply which means the messages delivered from the exhibition can raise audiences’ desire of initiative learning in the museum. The curator ordered artworks in an appropriate way to make a storyline efficiently. Therefore, the experience through this exhibition is meaningful and unforgettable.
However, this exhibition also has deficiencies as lacking participation. Due to the limitation of the space as well as the designing convention of traditional museums, the only way of participation is entering the exhibition hall and walking in the exhibiting rooms. There is no interaction in this exhibition which definitely lacks the entertainment realm of experience. This exhibition achieved almost every aspect of goals for its design in general. But the only shortage is lacking consideration of interacting experience during the curatorial process which should be considered more especially for a collecting exhibition.
Reference
Bennett, T. (1995). The Birth of the Museum. In The Birth of the Museum Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315002668
Chang, T. (2005). Yellow Box: Thoughts on Art before the Age of Exhibitions. In Fangwei Chang (ed.), The Yellow Box: Contemporary Calligraphy and Painting in Taiwan. Taipei: Taipei Fine Arts Museum, pp. 8–26.
Dernie, D. (2006). Exhibition design. W.W. Norton.
Greenhill, E. H. (1992). Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge. In Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge. Routledge.
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