Zhang Jian and China’s First Museum

by Lisa Claypool
Assistant Professor of Chinese Art History,
Lewis & Clark College

“Viewing paintings at an exhibition,” by Chen Shizeng

The Nantong Museum was the first domestically conceived, managed, and developed museum in China. The museum was established in 1905 by Zhang Jian, (1853–1926), a famous industrial entrepreneur and social reformer, in his adopted native place of Nantong, Jiangsu, a city approximately sixty miles northwest of Shanghai.

Professor Claypool will talk about what motivated Zhang Jian and
his collaborators to establish the museum as a site of cultural production that revolved around Chinese elite collecting practice and was based on the model of the colonial museum available in Shanghai.

She will also consider how, in their attempts to define what modern China looked like, Zhang Jian and his colleagues attempted to shape how visitors could begin literally to see and participate in this new and uniquely assembled vision of China at the beginning of the 20th century.

Sponsored by the Asian Art Council of the Portland Art Museum and the Northwest China Council

WHEN	Tuesday, May 30, 6:30PM
WHERE	Stevens Room, Portland Art Museum
COST	Free to NWCC and museum members; $5 general (Please show your membership card at ticket booth)