📖 Dragons Behind Glass. Views of China and Japan in Three American Museums.

This work explores the way Americans view Japan and China through our museums. The American Museum of Natural History gave a general overview of Japan and China. The Mobile Museum of Art focused only on pottery and the Morikami Museum focused on the Japanese immigrants that settled in Del Ray Beach. Differences and similarities of these museums and what these exhibits tell the viewer about the two cultures will be addressed in this work. It will present a view on what these museums could have done differently to better explain the uniqueness of Japan and China. Museums are places where the public can go to view exhibits of foreign places and things made in humanity?s past. They are designed to ignite people?s imaginations and educate them to ideas of which they have little or no knowledge. Exhibits are developed based on the museum?s goals, holdings, finances, benefactors as well as who their target audience is and this in turn creates different types of exhibits.