Appreciation of a Fine Article | Discourse Analysis of “Intangible Cultural Heritage”–Themed Exhibitions

As a spatial manifestation of social practice and value systems, museum exhibitions reflect the convergence and dialogue among diverse disciplinary paradigms within the museum setting. The pluralistic nature of China’s museum knowledge landscape has given rise to a differentiated typology of “intangible cultural heritage”–themed exhibition narratives. To date, as far as the author can discern, these can be broadly categorized into three main types: crafts-and‑arts narratives, folk‑custom narratives, and project‑based narratives.

Displaying cultural relics with an emphasis on aesthetics is a common practice in museum exhibitions, aiming to highlight their aesthetic value through the artistic dimensions of the objects themselves. Within the realm of fine art, traditional handicrafts are often categorized as “works of art,” each presented individually and spotlighted to accentuate their formal qualities and technical mastery. This artistically oriented exhibition approach for crafts essentially shifts the interpretive focus of related intangible cultural heritage items from their social‑functional role as “mediators” to their identity as cultural‑artistic “vessels.”

The incorporation of the “intangible cultural heritage” discourse has broadened our understanding of the established category of “arts and crafts,” revealing that, beyond a detached, contemplative aesthetic mode, it also encompasses an engaged, context‑based aesthetic experience, while highlighting the lived‑in character of craft traditions. Yet, as intangible cultural heritage draws attention to the relationship between craft‑related heritage and everyday life, it simultaneously elevates the cultural added value of crafted objects, reinforces the artistically informed individual consciousness of heritage bearers, and facilitates the transformation of craft‑based heritage into forms of pure artistic presentation. This duality gives rise to a narrative quality in the exhibition of intangible cultural heritage in the arts and crafts domain—one that oscillates between an “artistic” perspective and a focus on practical, life‑oriented meanings.

From its very inception, the international context of intangible cultural heritage has been inextricably entangled with the concept of “folklore,” a relationship that manifests itself in the frequent semantic redundancy of local ethnic‑folklore exhibitions. The museumization of Chinese folk‑culture artifacts has deep historical roots; though their trajectories have varied, the practical dimensions—shaped by national consciousness, disciplinary aspirations, and social concerns—share common ground with the orientations of contemporary intangible cultural heritage discourse. This convergence has facilitated the seamless transition or transformation of folklore narratives into a dominant mode of intangible cultural heritage presentation.

In this narrative framework, the significance of objects lies not in their aesthetic qualities per se, but in the socio-cultural contexts they embody. The modes of display can be categorized as “contextual display” and “site‑specific display”: contextual display organizes exhibits according to a conceptual, taxonomic structure, striving to convey the holistic nature of a regional culture; it is a curatorial approach imbued with structuralist and functionalist anthropological undertones. By contrast, site‑specific display emphasizes an experience‑oriented approach, often taking the form of reconstructed scenes that “create a virtual world in which visitors can immerse themselves.” The former focuses on the interrelations between material culture and intellectual knowledge, while the latter reflects a writing strategy akin to ethnographic texts. Today, folk‑culture exhibitions frequently blend these two approaches, using a linear or thematic cultural narrative as the overarching structure and selecting key cultural elements for scene‑based presentations.

Compared with the “didacticism” and “textualism” typically laid out flat in museum exhibition spaces, the significance of scenography for intangible cultural heritage from an anthropological perspective lies, first, in moving beyond the singularity of material objects to a multidimensional, woven tapestry of meaning; and second, in highlighting cultural signifiers, thereby identifying the core, representative, and expressive backbone elements within the heritage. This results in a certain degree of convergence and integration between the theory of exhibition design for intangible cultural heritage and that of folklore or ethnography.

Unlike the aforementioned mode in which intangible cultural heritage discourse is embedded within exhibition content, “intangible cultural heritage” itself also shapes, at the structural level, a new type of exhibition narrative—what might be termed “project‑based narrative.” By this we mean that, within a defined administrative region, the exhibition’s thematic framework and organizational structure are largely aligned with the classification and content of national‑, provincial‑, or municipal‑level ICH listings. Alternatively, when presenting a specific ICH item, the exhibition typically mirrors its official application dossier, adapting and reorganizing its contents—such as regional and geographical context, historical origins, core elements, related artifacts and works, transmission lineages, principal values, states of endangerment, and safeguarding measures—into a spatial and visual presentation. The hallmark of project‑based narrative is its replication of the official, standardized textual formulations of ICH; it may thus be regarded as the most “conventional” form of ICH‑themed exhibition. As a spatial translation of national cultural policy and cultural heritage administration, this narrative model is prominently featured in the displays of ICH pavilions constructed by local governments. Moreover, the large‑scale “market‑style” ICH exhibitions commonly seen across the country often adopt this same project‑based structural approach.

In actual exhibition practice, the three narrative types mentioned above can be presented independently or, depending on the specific thematic characteristics, nested and interwoven with one another. However, due to structural and conceptual tensions among these narrative modes, even when a composite “presence” is achieved, it still tends to manifest as a framework centered around a dominant narrative type, thereby shaping the exhibition’s positioning and defining its distinctive qualities.

As intangible cultural heritage has increasingly permeated both national policy and everyday social practice, the discourse of heritage has become deeply embedded in the exhibition strategies of museums and cultural institutions at all levels and across diverse formats. Over more than a decade of development, the presentation of intangible cultural heritage, while emphasizing typification, has also come to exhibit several widespread characteristics.