Getty Research Journal 

Abstract: While discussing interpretive methods, Bruno Latour comments, \"To shuttle back and forth, we rely on the notion of translation, or network. More supple than the notion of system, more historical than the notion of structure, more empirical than the notion of complexity, the idea of network is the Ariadne's thread of these interwoven stories.\"1 Quoted from his book We Have Never Been Modern, Latour's words clearly illustrate the specific parameters, or rather the arena, within which the research of our century, the post-postmodern century, acts—or, one may even say in provocation, is trapped. His argument that the apparatus, matrix, or framework of decoding histories and objects is tightly related to terms such as translation and network suggests that the idea of con nection and the traffic of thoughts are at the core of interpretive theories, as if the whole process of thinking is defined as a woven space of a cognitive character that binds and joins. Constrained to the metaphoric realm of Latour's suggestion of movement and transportability and allowed to simplify his hypothesis, I would suggest that, with the rapid growth of actions and movements and increasing consciousness of travel and migration, a shift in scholarly interest occurs. Places of departure and the location of destinations fall out of focus or are even sometimes ignored, and alternative, interactive spaces and zones of contact, as well as the sets of contacts between these specific sites,

Abstract: After the Opium and Arrow Wars, European, Japanese, and American governments nego tiated unequal concessions from the Qing imperial court. Companies and individuals established residential and commercial bases along the coast from Hong Kong to the Korean peninsula and Manchuria, creating a semicolonial environment that was inten sified by clashes with foreign troops. In these spheres, commercial and military, pho tography greatly facilitated the construction of identities. This essay is concerned with photography's role in the assignment of "Chinese" character and with the international consumption of this constructed "China" during the period from i860 to 1920. This was the period of photography's great growth internationally, when the new technology was a partner to vast colonial operations, imperial contests, and commercial experiments. Companies such as the American firm Underwood & Underwood pack aged and distributed sets of stereographic prints taken in foreign locations, expanding the viewership of images worldwide; these professionally printed photographic sets served a significant role in the construction of modern China.1 Photographic encounters between destitute workers along China's coast and foreign traders, officials, and business repre sentatives were recorded by Japanese, American, and European wartime photographers. "China" became an object of spectatorship—an extremely popular one—but its popu larity was imbedded in a foreign, negative image framed through violence and submission. The elaborate captions that accompany these photographs define "China" vis avis the larger domain of production and consumption, whose international dimensions are evident in the range of languages used: French, German, Italian, Russian, and English.2 Captions for the racialized images taken by professionals such as British portraitist Wil liam Saunders (fl. ca. 1862-88), American James Ricalton (1844-1929), and French patron of photography G. Prat (fl. 1878-96) routinely describe the people in Hong Kong, Guang zhou (Canton), Shanghai, Tianjin, and Beijing as "people of the Yellow Race."3 The cap tions note class and racial qualities, and the images are often explicitly violent. While it is beyond the length and scope of this article to determine the extent of colonial photog raphy's impact on Chinese identity, it is nonetheless critical to understand that colonial photography enjoyed an afterlife in the nationalizing construction of the Chinese self during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.4 Early photography was used effectively in treaty ports

Abstract: The mural America tropical, painted by David Alfaro Siqueiros in 1932 in downtown Los Angeles and whitewashed soon thereafter, has a complicated history that resulted in significant deterioration of the work. Efforts to preserve America tropical, begun in the 1960s, led to a collaborative project in 1988 between the Getty Conservation Institute and the City of Los Angeles to develop and implement a comprehensive plan to protect, preserve, interpret, and present the mural to the public through study and conservation; the design and construction of a protective canopy and public viewing platform; and the installation of an interpretive center.The essay discusses the history and condition of the mural and the documentation, conservation, and long-term monitoring and maintenance undertaken. Conservation included surface cleaning, plaster stabilization, removal of tar and remnant whitewash, loss compensation, and visual reintegration. The aim of the latter was to preserve the artist's hand and delicate...

Abstract: This article investigates plate glass as a new material medium in the art, architecture, and design in eighteenth-century China. By situating the production and consumption of plate glass in the processes of material, technological, and artistic and cultural exchanges in the early modern world, I examine how the uses of plate glass during China’s high Qing era (1661–1796) correspond to an epistemological shift to fictionality and illusionism, as well as a scopic culture of observation. Specifically, I look at the use of plate glass in painting, architectural construction (as in windowpanes), and interior display (mirrors and object coverings). Through examining the techniques and methods of using plate glass in those forms, I argue that the use of it as a novel material medium triggered new ways for people to recognize the self in relation to surroundings—knowing and experiencing spaces through bodily movement and action as well as disembodied imagination.