The Metropolitan Museum of Art began collecting Chinese art in 1879, just nine years after the museum's founding in 1870. A dedicated Department of Asian Art followed in 1915. Today, the Chinese collection comprises more than 12,000 objects spanning 5,000 years of history. These include ancient bronzes, Buddhist statuary, ink paintings, textiles, ceramics, and scholar’s objects. Many of these works were never meant to be displayed on walls or viewed in large public spaces.

The museum’s display logic, however, is shaped by modern conservation needs and Euro-American exhibition formats. As a result, works like handscrolls, album leaves, and calligraphy—once viewed in motion, in hand, and in private—are now presented in glass cases, fully extended and fixed. The transformation is more than physical; it affects how meaning is produced and how cultural values are conveyed.

The Met’s role as an encyclopedic museum compounds these tensions. Its cross-cultural curatorial framework often privileges visual coherence and linear storytelling, yet traditional Chinese art emphasizes suggestion, movement, and layered perception. These fundamental differences in how art is made and seen raise important questions about the role of spatial context in curatorial practice.