From Evidence to Intimacy: Curatorial Strategies and Memory Space in Xi’an Museums

The Chinese museum boom has received widespread academic attention in the past decade. Most frequently studied are either the state-run history museums or the large-scale private art museums. This article focuses instead on the field of small private (minban 民辦) history museums, particularly Red collection museums, which display objects from the revolutionary and Mao eras known as Red relics. This article compares two museums in Xi’an, one a state-run revolutionary history site, and the other a private Red collection museum. Both museums share a similar celebratory narrative of the rise of the CCP and New China. This paper argues that despite the similar narratives, the two types of museum take essentially oppositional approaches to their objects: the state-run history museum adopts an “evidentiary” approach, which foregrounds textual evidence and sidelines objects, while the Red collection museum uses an “intimate” curatorial strategy, which attempts to foster immediate individual interactions with large numbers of objects, unhindered by extensive textual information. And yet, the museums’ designs are perhaps contrary to expectations, as the state-run museum seeks to deepen its impact through the creation of an emotive atmosphere, while the Red collection museum relies on more traditional museum strategies of rationality and order. This paper explains this distinction by drawing on the idea of “hot” versus “cool” authenticating strategies, in order to note how the “cool” authenticating strategy of the public history museum precludes space for memory transmission and individual emotional engagement, while the “hot” authenticating strategy of the Red collection museum legitimises a broader range of vernacular memories. At the same time, this paper cautions against seeing Red collection museums as truly alternative spaces for memory construction and transmission, given how the discursive environment of the reform and opening up era and Xi Jinping’s “New Era” have shaped the expression of memories.