{"id":444,"date":"2017-01-30T20:08:50","date_gmt":"2017-01-30T20:08:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/?p=444"},"modified":"2017-01-30T22:30:35","modified_gmt":"2017-01-30T22:30:35","slug":"blog-post-2-the-palace-museum-of-beijing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/2017\/01\/30\/blog-post-2-the-palace-museum-of-beijing\/","title":{"rendered":"Blog Post 2: The Palace Museum of Beijing"},"content":{"rendered":"

As\u00a0Geoffrey D. Lewis addressed in\u00a0History of museums<\/em>, the collection, preservation, and interpretation of material things are the essential components of a museum. Not necessarily a modern construction that hosts objects collected from elsewhere, many buildings of historical significance have been adapted to house museums as well. In this post I will focus on The Palace Museum of Beijing, a historical site located in the center of the forbidden city. I believe that it possesses a combination of elements that is unique in museology: similar to Palace of\u00a0Fontainebleau, it serves both as a museum, and an architectural masterpiece itself.<\/p>\n

Unlike most other museums, the map <\/a>of The Palace offers\u00a0a recommended route for visitors to explore certain parts of the museum, meanwhile the tourists\u00a0are encouraged to walk through the entire palace. Since the museum was used as the royal palace for more than 400 years, the content are organized and allocated around the location, instead of the usual concept of building a museum to display materials.<\/p>\n

\"\"After entering through the main Gate, visitors will follow the central axis and explore the Halls (in the middle) and Gardens (on both sides). Finally after a detour leading to\u00a02 Areas, the visitors will leave the museum from the exit Gate. Thus, the original architectural plan has a strong impact on the structure of exhibitions, and consequently the viewers’ perception of the museum. In a sense, The Palace first categorizes its collections according to the popular route — the exhibit is divided into either a pure display of architectural masterpieces or ancient buildings that host themed collections. Then, the selected Halls display exhibitions which are categorized by the objects’ form of art. For instance, painting, calligraphy, \u00a0jewelry, ceramics and jade&precious stone are all showcased in different Halls.\u00a0The categorization of \u00a0the collection, despite of being seemingly sophisticated, precisely delivers the mission of The Palace museum to the public: preserve and display the pinnacle of Chinese art and architecture during\u00a0the Ming\/Qing dynasties.<\/p>\n

An alternate classification could be achieved by switching the recommended route according to the chronological\u00a0expansion of the\u00a0The Palace throughout 3 dynasties, so that the viewers could explore the\u00a0evolution of architectural styles\u00a0retrospectively. The collections will be consequently reorganized in a\u00a0chronological order. In this way, the changes in categorization\u00a0would also replace\u00a0the emphasis of the exhibition by dividing the integrated palace into independent collections of artifacts in different historical periods. However, compared with an intact palace, the fragments of Chinese art which are shaped by the alternate classification will lose its attraction to the viewers considerably.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As\u00a0Geoffrey D. Lewis addressed in\u00a0History of museums, the collection, preservation, and interpretation of material things are the essential components of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/60"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}