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Book ReviewNew Life for Local Museums
 Children watch a demonstration at the Baimi Clog Museum. (Photo Courtesy of Baimi Clog Museum) A Taiwanese scholar traces the rise of museums that focus less on national treasures and more on the memories and experiences of particular communities.
Museums, admittedly, can be intimidating places. The great national museums—the British Museum, the Smithsonian, the Louvre—are as much monuments to national potency as they are places for the appreciation of artistic creativity. Their curators pick through the fertile landscape of national memory to create a sense of awe and wonder. Rudyard Kipling, whose father was the curator of the Lahore Museum, hinted at this phenomenon in the opening of his imperial fantasy Kim when he noted that local residents reverentially referred to the museum as the Ajaibgher, the Wonder House.
Yet, while the collections of these august institutions, often housed in magisterial architecture, can conjure feelings of wonder, the splendor of the artifacts and the formality of their presentation are frequently alien to the lives of the average visitor. This is particularly true in Taiwan, where visitors to the National Palace Museum (NPM) peruse the dynastic splendors of mainland China, from which the people of Taiwan have been politically separated since 1949. While the NPM displays the most impressive collection of Chinese art in the world, its historical focus fails to reflect the rapid changes of recent years that have given rise to democratic politics and a national identity separate from the mainland.
In Museums and Cultural Identities, Chen Chia-li, an associate professor in the Graduate Institute of Museum Studies at Taipei National University of the Arts, connects the democratization of Taiwanese politics with the rise of local museums. These new museums have more modest ambitions, but they are intimately connected to the people and history of their particular locality. Chen argues that they have enabled communities to rewrite their own historical narratives and display a pride in local crafts and communal memories that are absent from more traditional museums.
To explore this phenomenon, Chen conducts a field study of three museums that have resuscitated a dying aspect of local culture—the Baimi Clog Museum, the Hsinchu Municipal Glass Museum and the Beitou Hot Springs Museum. Chen employs the analytical perspective of a social scientist to investigate these museums by interviewing museum workers and visitors. In the case of the Baimi Clog Museum, she discovers that a regeneration of the craft of clog making has transformed a village in Yilan County, northeastern Taiwan. According to a scholar quoted by Chen, “For the residents of Bai-mi community . . . the most durable childhood memory is the cracking sound emanating from their wooden clogs.” Visitors to the Baimi Clog Museum take part in one of the entertainments at the center. The clog museum is a far cry from the reverential atmosphere of many national museums. (Photo Courtesy of Baimi Clog Museum) Reviving the Craft
Once in Baimi, Chen finds that the process of reviving the clog craft began as an experiment, and as it caught on, residents decided to house their creations in a permanent museum created from a derelict building previously used by the Taiwan Compost Company. The site—formerly an eyesore, according to one interviewee—became a colorful addition to the community. And indeed, Chen shows quite convincingly through her interviews that the focus of this museum was the community itself as much as the clogs. “I found the most significant feature of this museum was its people,” Chen writes. “They work together to maintain the museum in the daytime, and many of them regard it as the center of their life, especially the older residents.”
This community interest, moreover, is encouraged by the innovative structure of the museum’s organization. A cooperative allows residents to buy shares in the museum and elect leadership. Although the shares are inexpensive, they allow residents to invest in the success of the museum. As a result, many who invest in the cooperative become volunteers at the museum to guard their investment. The participation, Chen discovered, results in a museum that has become a gathering place for volunteers and visitors from the community. In some ways, the museum takes on the air of a tea shop, temple or park. It provides a gathering spot for residents who are invested in an ongoing enterprise that connects the future of the community with the traditions of the past.
In the museum itself, residents mix freely with volunteers and staff workers, observing the clog making and mingling with friends. Visitors can participate in the clog making and all are free to handle the finished clogs. Nothing could be further from the reverential atmosphere of a national museum, with its glass viewing cases, guards and prohibition on touching the objects.
A similar model was adopted for the glass museum in Hsinchu, northern Taiwan, where another historic craft has been revived and community participation lies at the heart of the museum’s success. But perhaps the most interesting model of all is to be found in Beitou, a suburb of Taipei, where sulfurous springs bubble out from the earth. In 1995, a class of elementary school children rambling about on a school trip came across an unused and uncared for Japanese building. Their teachers later found out that it was to be demolished, and through grassroots activism the school secured permission from local authorities to save the building. It went on to become the heart of the Beitou Hot Springs Museum. Visitors to the National Palace Museum in Taipei view some of the museum’s precious objects. The NPM houses the foremost collection of Chinese art in the world and displays its treasures in a formal setting. (Photo by Huang Chung-hsin) Extension of History
The restored building retraces the history of Taiwan’s first developed hot springs, which came into being under the Japanese, who ruled Taiwan as a colony from 1895 to 1945. Yet while the building acts as the heart of the museum, the area’s hot springs act as a physical extension of the history presented in the main building. In effect, the whole town becomes part of the museum. The formality of a traditional museum is thus abandoned entirely, and the museum’s physical space extends even beyond the inclusiveness of the Baimi Clog Museum to encompass an entire district and its people. What started with the physical preservation of an old building thus becomes a living historical narrative connecting the people of Beitou with their past and creating a sense of continuity for the community and a direct connection to the land of Taiwan.
While Chen successfully explores the resurgence of three craft museums, her study of two politically oriented museums—Taipei’s 228 Memorial Museum and what she refers to as the I-Lan Museum of Local Political History, also known as the Memorial Hall of the Founding of Yilan Administration, in Yilan City—introduces a subject that might have been better left to a separate study. Indeed, the political narrative she presents begs as many questions as it answers.
In her exploration of the 228 Incident and the central role it plays in the democracy movement in Taiwan, for example, Chen relies on language that mirrors the deep identity crisis still occurring in Taiwan. Chen repeatedly describes the clash between the earlier immigrants from mainland China and those who came after 1945 as one of ethnic conflict. Yet, she later writes that these two groups are of course both ethnically Chinese.
The desire to characterize this conflict as an ethnic conflict is as inaccurate as it is understandable. While the group of Chinese immigrants arriving after World War II naturally desired to return to their homes in mainland China, the earlier Chinese immigrants had already begun to identify themselves with the geographic confines of Taiwan. It thus became useful for Taiwanese independence advocates to reject their cultural connection with the mainland in order to assert their aspirations for political independence.
The building that houses the Beitou Hot Springs Museum was saved from demolition by grassroots activism and now serves to connect local residents with the area’s past. (Photo by Chang Su-ching) Where these two groups actually differ is not in their ethnicity but in their competing historical narratives and different memories of the post-World War II period. In 1949, the Nationalist government of mainland China retreated to Taiwan, bringing the remnants of a defeated army. While the earlier immigrants to Taiwan hoped for greater political independence and a new era of self-government after the Japanese withdrew, the Nationalist authorities viewed them with suspicion. Not only had the long-term Taiwan residents been schooled by the Japanese for half a century, but some had even fought with the Japanese in China. The Nationalist government adopted a chauvinistic attitude and governed with an iron fist. It generally excluded the earlier immigrants from government jobs and attempted to rid local society of Japanese influence. To put it mildly, this was an inauspicious beginning.
This tense situation boiled over on February 28, 1947, when a general uprising broke out against Nationalist rule after an incident in which an elderly woman was bullied for selling contraband cigarettes. The minor incident ignited the explosive hostility between the two groups that led to widespread rioting. In the ensuing days, thousands died in the crackdown by Nationalist troops. The February 28 Incident—also known as the 228 Incident in the typical Chinese fashion of recording historical events by date—proved to be a formative political event in modern Taiwan. And to this day, the incident provokes heated debate and exposes the political rift between the Chinese immigrants who arrived after World War II and the descendants of those who immigrated in earlier centuries.
The 228 Museum, therefore, proves especially complicated for Chen’s investigation into Taiwan’s new museums. On the one hand, its artifacts provide a physical connection to the painful memories of those who suffered under Nationalist rule. On the other hand, its overt politicization of a contested political narrative causes it to be viewed with suspicion. While it succeeds in connecting a local group with certain communal memories, it hardly promotes the kind of positive communal experience of the craft museums discussed earlier.
It might have been more effective to place the museum in the context of buildings constructed by the Nationalist government that clearly reflect their own historical narrative. Taiwan is full of monuments reflecting the ambition to restore mainland China to Nationalist rule, and even street names reflect the nostalgia of the early Nationalists for their homes there.
Like the clog museum at Baimi, the Hsinchu Municipal Glass Museum is another example of an organization that has breathed new life into a historic craft. (Photo Courtesy of Hsinchu Municipal Glass Museum) By focusing solely on the misguided notion of ethnic conflict, moreover, Chen is also leaving out the earlier history of Japanese occupation of Taiwan. Indeed, the 228 Museum, like the museums in Hsinchu and Beitou, is housed in a former Japanese colonial building. Yet at no point does she address the contradiction of housing a museum that she sees as a revival of Taiwanese identity in a building constructed by an occupation force that repressed the language, traditions and culture of the people of Taiwan for a half-century.
During the Japanese period, students were required to speak Japanese in school and to revere the emperor of Japan. While she feels free to praise the graceful Japanese architecture and the benefits of the Japanese educational system—based on Western scientific methods—she sees nothing troubling about praising a colonial power that sought to turn the people of Taiwan into second-class subjects of the Japanese empire.
In part, this is because attitudes toward Japan act as a bellwether of political sentiment in Taiwan. For the Nationalist Party, Japan was a wartime enemy of all the Chinese people. But for independence activists in Taiwan, it acts as a foil to the arrival of the Nationalist government. It is the only alternative government in living memory, and is therefore seen through rose-colored glasses by some.
Nonetheless, this debate is a living example of the painful process of identity formation in modern Taiwan. Chen notes the contradiction after exploring the history of the 228 Museum. “As a museum that aims to promote peace and harmony among different ethnic groups,” she writes, “it will achieve its goal only with difficulty unless it reflects upon the subjectivity of its discourse.”
No matter what divisions it highlights, however, the 228 Museum is undeniably a logical outgrowth of Taiwan’s democratization. It reflects the contested histories that mirror the different political views that are a natural part of an open society. If one believes that identity is constructed, in Taiwan as elsewhere, it is surely an unfinished project. President Ma Ying-jeou speaks at an event in Taipei this year to commemorate the February 28 Incident. Ma has emphasized the protection of human rights so that such a tragedy cannot happen again in Taiwan. (Photo Courtesy of Office of the President) An Alternative Approach
Chen’s investigation of the connections between democratization, localization and the rise of community museums mirrors her interest in both museums and contemporary social issues. It is an interesting and valuable approach, but does it offer the best explanation for some of the phenomena she observes? Scholars do not have the luxury of choosing the discipline that best fits the subject of their research, but seeing things through the lens of a certain academic discipline can lead to insufficient explanation.
Indeed, it is hard to imagine telling the story of the rise of community museums without addressing Taiwan’s economic development—an approach admittedly outside Chen’s field and perhaps outside her interests. Nonetheless, could it not be that the Baimi Clog Museum above all represents an attempt to stimulate an economy withering from the loss of mining jobs? In Hsinchu and Beitou, a similar story is left untold. Once-vacant properties have been reused to stimulate cultural tourism, and dying economies have experienced a revival. While these historic sites might connect some residents to their past, they are certain to find equal favor as vehicles for economic growth.
A similar economic story underpins the larger narrative of democratization and the decentralization of political power in Taiwan. Sound economic policies in the postwar decades allowed for a rapid rise in Taiwan’s standard of living. Education became universal, literacy rates soared and a vibrant entrepreneurial middle class sprouted up. In the wake of prosperity came a new interest in environmental concerns and historical preservation. Economic growth, in short, primed the democratic changes and empowered communities to preserve cultural artifacts and harness cultural projects to stimulate the local economy further.
As a development story, the museum boom indicates nothing so much as the rapid success of Taiwan’s transition to a highly developed economy and a flourishing democracy. Regardless of which approach best explains the increased interest in museums, Taiwan is undoubtedly a richer, more interesting place as a result. Chen provides a readable, insightful foray into the field, and her voice adds to what is perhaps the real wonder house of Taiwan—an intelligent national debate over the nature of culture and identity in a modern, prosperous society.
____________________________ Copyright © 2010 by Robert Green |
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