Rujivacharakul publishes 'Collecting China'

Professor Vimalin Rujivacharakul recently published her edited volume Collecting China: The World, China, and a History of Collecting. This book grew out of a simple question: how does a thing become Chinese? Fifteen essays from renowned academics and museum curators explore this question from different angles in the history of collecting, ranging from close examination of world-renowned private collections (the Rockefellers, the Goncourts, the Walters, the du Ponts, the Yeh family, and the Getty Research Institute, among others) to critical reinterpretations of historical writings that continue from records of Emperor Wu Di of the Han Dynasty to the story of Robinson Crusoe and the first international exhibition of Chinese art. With accounts that incorporate records normally unavailable to the public, the authors map the vast network of collecting practices in different periods, and demonstrate the ways in which material things produced in China acquire new cultural identities through collecting practices.