Pearls From The Orient Archive: The Chinese Minority Nationalities' Art Gallery at The Shanghai Museum

Originally posted 14th March 2015

The next stop in The Shanghai Museum was the Chinese Minority Nationalities’ Art Gallery. A quick glance at the map that’s at the entrance and you’ll see that vast swathes of the land mass of China are occupied by minorities (all those bits that aren’t solid pale yellow) and that although some areas have mixed populations as in the far south western province of Yunnan, places such as Tibet are solidly full of an ethnic minority. Which leads one to the thorny question of why Tibet and Xinjiang Uygur and Outer Mongolia for that matter, are part of China at all. Some of the people who live in these regions argue the same. I’m not going to argue either way, but I would just like to say that having these land masses between its borders and “China proper” give China a huge protection zone, either in height from the Himalayas or in distance across the dessert and Steppes and keeps at arms-length the Russian Bear and sub-continent of India, which is perhaps why the powers that be think that it is a good idea. The consequence of all this is that China has 55 or so recognized ethnic minorities, i.e. non-Han Chinese peoples. This section of the museum was dedicated to their crafts, but it is essentially a costume museum. Now I’m more of a V&A/Pitt Rivers than a British/Ashmolean museum sort of person. I get bored in the British Museum. I don’t in the Pitt Rivers. I have never understood the fascination of looking at sculptures as a form of studying history. The Elgin Marbles could go home right away as far as I’m concerned. I mean you get more out of understanding life in the 1950s by looking at artefacts and and clothes than you ever would out of looking at a Henry Moore sculpture. As a piece of sculpture it’s fine, but then it should be in a sculpture park.

Now as you know I like textiles, so this was a great thrill for me and the variety of costumes (some of which are current everyday wear for some of these people) were fascinating, so I thought I would just give you a visual tour. Most of these costumes date from the second half of the twentieth century.