The Palace Museum The Royal Culture And Museum Culture

Although the history of the Forbidden City is nearly600years since it was built in1420, the history of the transformation from the Forbidden City to the Palace Museum is no more than100years. When the Forbidden City was transformed into the Palace Museum, the royal culture was also changed into the culture of museum. This transformation happened in the background of the cultural transformation of Chinese society from tradition to modernity. This dissertation focuses on the relationship between the royal culture and the museum culture in the Palace Museum. It also discusseshow these two different cultures have functioned together in the Palace Museum and have severed the public as both cultural heritage and museum. Chapter one talks about the characteristics of the destiny and the dominance of the royal culture, the characteristic of the feudal patriarchal clan system as well as the Confucianism’s influence over the royal culture. Chapter twoattributes the museum culture to preservation, share, and academic research, and it talks about the thinkingof two connections:people and stuff, protection and use, triggered by the three attributes of the museum culture. Additionally, it also discusses the three alterations of the cultural figure of the Forbidden City, from the highest governing body of the feudal society to the embodiment of the success of the democratic revolution, from the center of monarchical power to the center of the Chinese traditional culture, from the royal palace open to only a very small group of ruling class to a museum open to the public. Chapter three studies the connotation of the culture and its transformation, and the transformation from the royal culture to the museum culture based on the transformation from the Chinese traditional culture to Chinese modern culture, and the contradictory unity of the royal culture and museum culture, and the last but not least the development direction of the royal culture and the museum culture in the Palace Museum.