OCI Public Talk: Loot from China’s Summer Palace in auctions, exhibitions and museums with Professor Louise Tythacott

Please join us on Friday 4th April from 13:00-14:00pm (UK time); 8:00-9:00pm (Beijing time) when we will be delighted to welcome Professor Louise Tythacott who will talk about Loot from China’s Summer Palace in 
auctions, exhibitions and museums, hosted by OU Online Confucius Institute (OCI) and part of the Open Centre for Languages and Cultures (OCLC) Distinguished Speaker Series. 

 About the talk:  

In October 1860, during the Second Opium War, British and French troops looted and burned the Yuanmingyuan, or old 'Summer Palace', near Beijing. This act of cultural vandalism led to the destruction of China's most important palace complex and the dispersal of its imperial art collection. Over a million objects were looted, many now in private collections and public museums worldwide. This talk will explore the trajectories of Yuanmingyuan objects from China to both Britain and France, examining the succession of meanings and values attributed to these imperial artefacts in the West – their existence as commodities in auction houses; their lives in international exhibitions and public displays; and their status as curiosities, art objects or ‘trophies of war’ in a range of different institutions. 

About the speaker:  

Louise Tythacott is Professor Emerita of Curating and Museology at SOAS, University of London. For the past decade or so, she has been researching the biographies of objects looted from the Yuanmingyuan or old ‘Summer Palace’ in Beijing. In 2017, she secured a philanthropic donation to undertake research on ‘Summer Palace’ objects and, with the help of a research assistant, she visited 29 museums, libraries and archives in the UK, Dublin and Paris in order to analyse objects, historic documents, museum displays, as well as interview curators. She was awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship in 2022 and is now completing a monograph based on this research.  

The talk will be held online via Microsoft Teams. The link will be sent out to those who have registered to attend before the talk.  Please register here on Eventbrite to attend.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Update 08/04/25 - Please find the recording from the talk and transcript available here.