The exhibit of chinese porcelain and glass at reed college seeks to recontextualize the small collection in its historical dimension as "loot" gained in in the Opium Wars of the 19th century. Rather than using a background of white or similarly neutral color, a black cloth lines the back of the display case. Black and white pictures of chinese palaces are attached to the cloth background above and behind the pieces. These pictures, combined with the rather somber cloth makes the viewer aware of how removed these objects are from their original setting and highlights their "stolen" nature. A paper handout is in a stack next to the pieces and it explains what the opium wars were and how they relate to the Chinese porcelain that entered western art markets shortly afterwards.
A survey of the ceramic collections at the National Palace Museum in Taiwan shows that curators there seek to divorce the Chinese objects from their contexts as court art. In the text that accompanies each object, no mention is made of the Opium Wars or of Western influence at all. Each piece is shown in high resolution photographs against a two-toned background of neutral grays, whites and blues. The text (in english) focuses purely on the object and points out relevant details about the object's construction, decoration and sometimes its use.
While the Taiwanese exhibit lacks a good deal of context for these pieces, I personally find the Reed College exhibit uncomfortably didactic. The area of the library where the pieces are displayed is notoriously cold and badly lit. What's more, the display is simply too high to be accessible. Half of the exhibit shows the pieces well above the viewer's head, such that only a bottom view is available. While the display case itself is very tall, the shelves are adjustable and could easily have been lowered. Clearly, the curators are trying to make a moral point about the objects' very existence in this corner of the world, and want to condemn the military events which started the "long and tumultuous" journey that originally removed the objects from China. The awkward positioning and location of the pieces within the library help to make this idea more physical. However, the handout is historically reductive: one sentence reads "These photographs were taken in 1906, following the destruction of Chinese culture...". While the point is interestingly made, the curators have been overly forceful, even abusive of their curatorial powers and the end result is that the viewer feels bullied into a position, rather than engaged in a dialogue. I don't think it is unreasonable to suggest that the curators feel guilty about their school's ownership of these pieces. Perhaps such a guilt is rooted in a sense of unwilling complicity in the power structures that made such acquisitions (by both the American military, and Reed College) possible.
