Museums' International Collaboration: Case Studies of Cross-border Exhibitions in China and Japan in the 21st century

This thesis aims to analyse the processes of museums’ international collaboration through cross-border exhibitions displayed in China and Japan, to understand the mechanisms of cooperation between museums, cultural diplomacy, and their functionality. After theoretically analysing the phenomenon of international exhibitions and the characteristics of the museum systems in China and Japan, four case studies of exhibitions opened to the public from 2015 to 2021 have been examined. These chosen case studies mainly focus on the 21st century, when vast museums and exhibitions become essential to their national cultural policies. In past decades, cross-border exhibitions have attracted millions of visitors’ attention in these societies and provided valuable opportunities for museums to reach wider audiences through exhibitions and improve their global reputation.
At the same time, China and Japan encountered challenges when cooperating with their foreign museum colleagues, from the narratives of exhibitions to display requirements. However, the solutions and motivations were different, which became the key to understanding the various cultural policies in these two countries. In this thesis, four cross-border exhibitions between Europe and East Asia, mainly in the UK, France, China and Japan, have been analysed. Each exhibition had opened to the public for 71 to 95 days, and the display time depends on the rental cost, the calendar of the touring exhibition, the vulnerability of collections, curators’ academic research purposes, and so on. Two exhibitions were displayed in China's leading political and economic cities: the National Museum of China in Beijing and the Shanghai Museum in the city's centre. Two were displayed in Japan: the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum and the Tokyo National Museum of Nature and Science.
Fieldwork in these four museums in China and Japan was conducted as an essential part of the methodology of this thesis, which combined face-to-face interviews with curators and official email answers to the researcher’s questionnaire from the public relations sector of museums. The museum library in Japan kept the catalogue book published after the exhibition finished, which allowed the analysis of the touring exhibition in the past. By combining the details of the process and results of these four cross-border exhibitions, this thesis wants to contribute to the understanding of museums’ international cooperation. In addition, we were exploring more possibilities for global heritage management by creating new narratives for more comprehensive visitors.