SABRINA TIAN ’24

Around November, I was offered the exciting opportunity to curate a show for the College of East Asian Studies. The result was the exhibition, “Understanding China in the Age of Unequal Treaties” which is currently in the CEAS gallery. All works included are from the College of East Asian Studies’ Art and Archival Collection, a very rich resource that is seldom displayed. I wanted to bring these objects to light and let the Wesleyan and Middletown communities see what a great resource we have available on campus. The artifacts included in this show deal with how the West came to understand and misunderstand Chinese culture through art objects, diplomacy, and interactions with Chinese people after the Opium Wars. The exhibition spans into the modern era to highlight the ways in which certain prejudices and patterns of political behaviors continue to manifest in today’s political climate.