The Astor Court embodies both the promise and the paradox of cross-cultural display. While it brings the philosophy of Chinese aesthetics into architectural form, its limitations reflect deeper institutional habits. Museums tend to prioritize object preservation over experiential depth, static display over embodied engagement. As a result, they often struggle to convey the temporal, intimate, and participatory qualities at the heart of traditional Chinese art.

So how might we move forward?

One approach is to rethink the spatial rhythms of the exhibition itself. Can galleries be designed to allow for moments of pause, reflection, and narrative unfolding? Can pathways mirror the flow of scrolls and gardens, inviting visitors to slow their pace and reorient their gaze?

Digital interventions also hold promise. Augmented Reality could reintroduce motion and interaction to static displays. A scroll could be unrolled on-screen, inviting users to guide the narrative at their own speed. Virtual recreations of scholar’s studios or garden paths could restore the lost context of these works, making visible what the vitrine conceals.

Equally important are low-tech gestures: seating areas aligned with the garden style that encourage rest, interpretive texts that emphasize rhythm and metaphor, and participatory programs like calligraphy demonstrations or poetry readings that reanimate the cultural life surrounding the artworks.

Museums must also continue to question whose voice frames the display. Including curatorial perspectives from China or from diasporic Chinese communities can challenge the Euro-American defaults that often shape interpretation. Cross-cultural display is not only about showing artworks from elsewhere—it’s about reimagining how knowledge, beauty, and history are mediated through space.

In the end, to rethink display is to rethink relationship. The goal is not to replicate a Chinese garden or studio in perfect fidelity, but to honor its spirit—its pacing, its openness, its invitation to wander and wonder. In doing so, museums can become more than repositories of culture; they can become places where different ways of seeing, moving, and knowing meet.