ABSTRACT
The British Museum describes itself as 'a unique resource for the world: the breadth and depth of its collection allows a world-wide public to re-examine cultural identities and explore the complex network of interconnected human cultures'. The British Museum's 'planned' approach to the development of its collection of twentieth century, and latterly post-1949 and Cultural Revolution-era visual culture, originated in a drive to establish 'contemporary collecting by curators in the field' by the then Director, David Wilson, in the 1970s. Little of the British Museum's collection of post-1949 visual culture from China had ever been displayed in public until 2008. Stephanie Donald and Harriet Evans aimed to use the exhibition, and the accompanying publication, to deliver a more 'nuanced, multi-and inter-disciplinary appraisal of the visual culture of the Cultural Revolution in the light of the growing body of literature that offered a revised assessment of the Cultural Revolution.
