This exhibit uses many unique and beautiful artifacts to illustrate the depth and breadth of Chinese high culture over many centuries. Its centerpiece is a beautiful, large kwan-yin statue of carved ivory, but also includes many smaller items, including bi-disks and other artifacts from over the centuries.
It also gives a glimpse into the cultural background that Overseas Chinese brought with them to California and other points around the globe in the 19th century.
The richness depicted in this exhibit stands in stark contrast—and presents an ironic backdrop—to the anti-Chinese propaganda in California that led to the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act portrayed in allied exhibits within the Library in 2009.
This cultural exhibit was one of six displays that the Library coordinated, starting in Fall Quarter 2008. Each exhibit illuminated some aspect of the Chinese American experience in California, inspired by the visiting show from the Chinese Historical Society of America: Remembering 1882: Fighting for Civil Rights in the Shadow of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which dealt with the Chinese Exclusion Act of that year.
The Stones & Bones component of this larger festival of exhibits, dealt with Chinese high culture as a backdrop to the broader topic of the Chinese Experience in California. Lanier Graham, the Curator of the University Art Gallery at the time, produced the display, which consisted of an elaborately carved kwan-yin statue of bone and ivory.
Graham provided this centerpiece, as well as numerous smaller objets d'art that illustrated the development of Chinese culture from 200 B.C. to the 20th century.
- DA
Producers: Lanier Graham, Richard Apple
Concept and Content Development: Lanier Graham
Poster and Graphics: Richard Apple
Archival and Artifact Support: CSUEB Art Gallery, Institute for Aesthetic Development
Copyright 2008-2009
As you can discern from elsewhere on this page, in 2008 the CSUEB Libraries invited 2 traveling exhibits and 4 CSUEB departmental players to participate in this unique festival centering on the Chinese Experience in California.
What is not so clear is that - at one point when all the exhibits were finally up - they seemed to overtake the library itself:
To make sense of it at this remote date, we recommend you visit the various component exhibits listed below or under the Past Exhibits tab at the top of this page.
You can link to new LibGuides for individual exhibits in this festival (as the Guides become available, links will be activated):
Traveling Exhibits:
CSUEB-Produced Exhibits:
Hope you enjoy what you see!
- DA
