Foreign Affairs
OBJECTIVE
Explore a debateable issue thoroughly by researching the issue how it affects humanity in various domains, such as politics, education, history, culture and science. Then, develop opportunity gaps as possible solutions and gathered the materials into a structured book to introduce the issue to the public and demonstrate how design can be a powerful media to change the perspective towards the issue.
BRIEF
Cultural heritage reflects a country, nation, achievements, values and beliefs. Museums play an important role in shaping a sense of identity and belonging to its citizens. Protecting cultural heritage is an important manifestation to human civilization and museums provide an instrumental way to respect history and tradition.
The British Museum, one of the biggest museums in the world, has abundant collections of antiquities from various cultures. Over half of its collections came from other countries. Have you ever considered the journey of these collections? The issue has become more discussed between the countries of ownership and the countries of origin, and the British Museum is often been the focal point in this issue because it refuses to return anything. This project motivates people to deeply think about the ethics of the ownership of cultural heritage.
APPROACH
This book showed the history and controversial issues associated with the ownership of collections. Since these issues refer to specific information about the science of museums, I started this book with museums’ origins. Then, I explored source collections and the ethics of conflicting laws of ownership. While providing readers with detailed background knowledge, I communicated the issues of cultural and national ownership of collections through organizing complex information into clear infographics and evocative images. In doing this book, I found it possible to explore how the power of design can be used to influence large-scale problems.
