The Risk of Historical Artefacts in Travel: The Construction of Risk in the International Travelling Exhibition

Abstract

This article interrogates the risk of historical artefacts in travel, emphasising especially on the construction of the risk of boundary-crossing when museum exhibits travel abroad through "outbound" international travelling exhibitions. This follows the history of a controversial exhibition, the "Splendour of Imperial China" -held in 1996 that travelled from the National Palace Museum in Taipei which is renowned for its abundant and unique Chinese art collection to one of the most prominent museums on the global stage -the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Drawing upon Mary Douglas's analysis of danger/risk and classification, this paper argues that the risk within the "outbound" international travelling exhibition is less ontological than constructed. Often the controversy over the risk re-delineates the boundary between "us" and "them". This article, first of all, examines the power-laden relationship, regulated by the struggle of the global museum field, when museum experts at home and abroad co-write the risk of an exhibition's travel in the language of insurance calculation. Second, it analyses the laymen's protesting discourses against the historical artefacts' overseas travel through outbound international travelling exhibition. The protest which appropriated the "keeping-whilegiving" logic of exchange, and backed up with both national sentiments and international symbolic sources, rendered the exhibition a hot potato. Finally, it interrogates how the settled outbound travelling exhibition actually renders the museum collection reclassified and revalorized according to their suitability for overseas travel.

Materiality and Managerial Techniques

“…Physical objects are important in the museum environment and in contemporary art (Dominguez Rubio & Silva, 2013). One could write a material history of museums through the history of their collected objects (Alberti, 2005), while cultural objects and their movement can be the subject of public controversies (Lai, 2006). Thus, an important starting point is to think about following these physical objects, with a consideration of movement and modification.…”

“…Or they may be decided locally, in response to general government request, as seen in the state government mandate for Museums Victoria to value the collections, which gave methodological agency to organizations at the local level as long as these were validated. For this reason, just as physical museum objects might circulate for exhibition around the world (Lai, 2004(Lai, , 2006, we also see a global circulation of museum management practices in general, and risk models specifically. These flows also include risk objects like the agents of deterioration noted previously, as well as management systems, evoking a global professional community.…”