When it comes to reviewing museums and galleries, I feel a little like Brian Fellow: I'm just an enthusiastic young man with a sixth-grade education and a love for pretty objects.
But since my Chinese tutor said that the Shanghai Museum is the only worthwhile museum in the city, it seemed worth a visit.
I was skeptical; the first and largest exhibit I saw focused on ancient pottery. Yeah, I've seen a bowl before - no big deal. I was then reminded that the Chinese invented pottery and saw that the oldest artifacts were from several millennia B.C. Europeans were probably still struggling over the idea of fire while the Chinese were making intricately designed bowls adorned with complex drawings.
It was interesting to see the evolution of the ancient bowl into the delicate "china" style, but I was disappointed that the exhibit stopped at around the 17th century. Seeing the leap from the fancy styles of that era to the one-cent plastic bowls that the country is famous for today would have been quite intriguing.
Though everything was labeled in Chinese and English, I wished I had splurged and bought one of those audio headsets. I was walking by some random statues of horses and camels and the like when I found a large, elaborate statue of some sort of human/demon/god/animal in elaborate dress and a triumphant pose quite literally stomping on top of a screaming baby. The caption only said something like "guardian of the imperial tomb." Come on, China, you can do better than that.
An especially interesting exhibit was the "Chinese Minority Nationalities' Art Gallery." In case you didn't know, modern China encompasses many areas inhabited by Arab, Mongolian and Tibetan peoples, to name a few. On display were traditional sets of clothing along with a few tools and paintings. Since China is so immense and especially dense along the east coast, it's fascinating to see exhibits about the everyday lives of people in remote parts of the same country. To quote Mr. Fellow, that's crazy!
I became discouraged about my knowledge of art when my Chinese tutor tried to start a conversation about the differences between Chinese and Western paintings. All I could tell her was that Europeans didn't paint on scrolls. I guess she was at about my level, since her first observation was that Westerners don't exclusively paint mountains.
Then, after thinking long and hard about everything I know about art, I took a deep breath and explained that "this painting looks a little blurry; it reminds me of the Western style of impressionism, which is interesting because the painting is from the mid 19th-century, around the same time as impressionist artists like Monet."
I don't even know if any of that is right. Yeah, I got into Tufts.
The last exhibit I saw was about the evolution of the Chinese currency, which is a must-see for someone studying international finance. It was mostly just row after row of circular metal coins, but I was most interested in the attempts at a standardized currency that were made before the invention of the coin.
My personal favorites were the metal knives that were once used as currency. I can imagine how that might have gone wrong: You think, "Well, I could either pay this guy or keep my money so that I can kill him with it."
That's my attempt at "high culture" commentary. Stay tuned next week when my guests include a talking bird and a pot-bellied pig.
Mike Adams is a junior majoring in international relations. He can be reached at michael_j.adams@tufts.edu.
