For a long time, the curation of most traditional calligraphy exhibitions has lacked consideration of the viewing experience, often resulting in wonderful works being buried in a large exhibition hall or among a vast array of works, with no way to display the various aspects and multiple layers of calligraphy in a comprehensive manner. In contrast, the thorough curation of art exhibitions today allow visitors to gradually accumulate a basic knowledge of and a way of appreciating art, even though most of them do not have a background in the study of art. As for traditional calligraphy exhibitions, visitors are mostly the students or the calligraphy club friends of the featured calligrapher, and it seems difficult to expand the audience beyond these circles. If one talks to young art lovers—those so-called hipsters—about impressive calligraphy exhibitions from recent years, works of Taiwanese calligrapher — Tong Yang-Tze or Chinese calligrapher — Xu Bing, will be the first thing that is mentioned, or some other contemporary works of ink with strong innovative elements.
However, is that the only way to promote calligraphy? There’s nothing wrong with it if it is the result of one’ creative temperament, or if one is focused on the effectiveness of the exhibition. But not necessarily! That is because I also see many calligraphers who can still create something new based on the traditional rules of calligraphy. If we look at it from the perspective of promoting calligraphy culture, we cannot remain unaware of the contemporary audience’s ardent desire for a fulfilling exhibition experience, otherwise calligraphy will continue to languish on the sidelines with the number of people able to appreciate it becoming less and less, even though professional calligraphers are working diligently as usual.
Based on my personal experience of curating exhibitions in the past few years, I would like to, humbly, propose specific strategies that correspond to specific aspects of the planning of exhibitions, so that calligraphy exhibitions can provide suitable things to appreciate for visitors of different levels of familiarity with the art form. Optimizing the sophistication of the curation of calligraphy exhibitions and enhancing the effectiveness of promotion will expand the population base of calligraphy enthusiasts, and increase the effectiveness of expenses in government-owned venues.
In this article, I will set aside for the time being contemporary works of calligraphy that possess a high degree of visual tension and exhibition effect, and specifically focus on exhibitions of traditional calligraphy. Although there are still many commentators who question whether a difference ought to be made between traditional and innovative calligraphy, or between contemporary and non-contemporary calligraphy, numerous masters have investigated the profound topic already. Therefore, this article will begin its exploration from the perspective of ordinary viewers. If “textual art” and “pictorial art” were placed on two sides of the scales, the article would lean toward the side of textual art, where calligraphy resides, and discuss as well as make suggestions for curating an exhibition of calligraphic works. To avoid making this article so long that it could be a manual, the detailed specifications of exhibition setups has been abridged for now.
