ABSTRACT
The educational motive concerns acquiring and transmitting knowledge about a certain category of objects. Collectors may assume that an increase in knowledge goes hand in hand with the ownership of the objects. The Lion’s Kingdom Museum in Taiwan houses the world’s largest collection of artistic representations of the lion. It concerns thousands of art objects in jade, stone, gold, silver, bronze, wood, earthenware, porcelain, and textile from the Tang dynasty until the recent past, mostly from continental China, complemented with pieces from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and other parts of Asia. Recently, Taiwan has been opened up for tourists from the Chinese mainland who appear to have much interest in ancient Chinese art. After the Cultural Revolution, many ancient art objects have disappeared from the Chinese mainland. The Lion Kingdom’s Museum in Taiwan shows an obvious identification with a Chinese identity.
