Strategies of Collecting and Displaying China in Nineteenth-Century Germany: Gotha’s Chinese Cabinet

• Applicant: Dr. Emily Teo
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History ; Art History
• Term: from 2020 to 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 442207053

• Final Report Year: 2025

Final Report Abstract

The project reconsiders the history of Chinese-European cultural interconnections through the perspective of material culture and the history of collections. It brings renewed attention to the historical Chinese cabinet at Gotha, founded around 1800 by Duke August of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg (1772-1822). Once a leading collection of Chinese art in continental Europe, it was largely forgotten following its dissolution in the 1870s. Grounded in archival research, and probing forgotten historical interconnections between ideas, spaces and artefacts, the project retraces the collection’s history. Starting from a handful of ‘foreign’ objects in the early modern Kunstkammer, it expanded into a private Chinese cabinet around 1800 and a public ethnographic collection by 1850. The project is innovative in its interdisciplinarity: using methods like object biographies, provenance research, discourse analysis to contextualise a single collection and relating it to nineteenth-century European imperialism and the expansion of ethnographic museums. Historians characterise European attitudes towards China as shifting from early modern ‘sinophilia’ to ‘sinophobia’ by the late-eighteenth and nineteenth century. The research identifies a similar, though less polarising shift in strategies of collecting and displaying Chinese artefacts. Chinese cabinets in European palaces presented China as a distant empire of wealth, wonder and potential. In contrast, the professionalisation of ethnographic museums during the nineteenth century resulted in displays that purported to convey an accurate representation of China in miniature. In ethnographic displays, Chinese artefacts ceased to evoke wonder and boundless potential in the minds of museum audiences, presenting instead a finite and penetrable nation state. The research resulted in 4 articles in edited volumes and journals and a monograph project (in progress, at book proposal stage). The publications contextualise Chinese collections in Gotha within a larger context of the European engagement with China. They also present important new findings, such as the collection’s genesis and development, networks of collectors and researchers, audience reception, and contributions towards knowledge about China. Ongoing results were communicated at leading conferences like the Renaissance Society of America and the European Association of Chinese Studies. The research also led to collaboration with Friedenstein Foundation Gotha, and an international workshop, ‘From Cabinets to Museums: Exploring the Histories of Chinese Collections in Europe’ in 2024. Throughout the duration of the project, ongoing results were presented at workshops, seminars and lectures at museums and universities.

Publications

• ‘Exploring the History of Friedenstein’s Chinese Cabinet’, Research in Gotha Blog
  Emily Teo
  
• ‘From Kunstkammer to Chinese Cabinet: Collecting and Categorizing Chinese Objects’, Networks and Practices of Connoisseurship (Warburg-Haus, Hamburg, 2-4 June 2022)
  Emily Teo
  
• ““Truly Chinese”: Transporting Chinese Objects to Germany in the Nineteenth Century”’ Transporting Culture (Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture, online, 20 Oct 2022)
  Emily Teo
  
• Duke August’s Chinese Cabinet at Gotha: Authenticity and Connoisseurship of Asian Objects in Germany. Networks and Practices of Connoisseurship in the Global Eighteenth Century, 203-220. De Gruyter.
  Teo, Emily
  
• ‘Private Collection to Public Display: Curating Gotha’s Chinese and Japanese Museum (1820- 1860)’, Publics of the First Public Museums I. Institutional Sources (XVIII-XIX c.) (Sapienza Università di Roma, 19-21 October 2023) [Video Link]
  Emily Teo
  
• ‘Encountering Qing China in European Museums.’ Presented in ‘Encountering China: European Travellers in the Long Nineteenth Century’, European Association of Chinese Studies Biennial Conference (Tallinn, 26-30 August 2024)
  Emily Teo
  
• ‘The Literary Kunstkammer: From Travellers’ Accounts to Collectors’ Cabinets.’ Presented in ‘Collecting and Knowledge Production through Travel’, Renaissance Society of America 2024 (Palmer House, Chicago, 21-23 March 2024)
  Emily Teo
  
• ‘Distant Splendour: The Transmission of Asian Art from Text to Object’ Presented in ‘Asia in the Global Renaissance’, Renaissance Society of America 2025 (Boston, 20-22 March 2025)
  Emily Teo
  
• ‘Mirroring the Chinese Emperor in European Palaces.’ Presented in ‘Techne, Collecting, and the Practice of Good Governance’, Renaissance Society of America (Boston, 20-22 March 2025)
  Emily Teo