Frontiers in Art Research, 2026, 8(3); doi: 10.25236/FAR.2026.080311.
Qiantong (Pei Ying) Wong
Academy of Arts and Design, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
The museum display of Buddhist images transforms not only their location but also the interpretive, spatial, and sensory relations through which they acquire meaning. While classification by chronology, geography, material, and iconography makes Buddhist art accessible to wider audiences, it can also detach images from ritual practice, architecture, bodily movement, and collective memory. This article examines this tension through three modes of curatorial mediation: understanding, perception, and immersion. Drawing on museum theory, object biography, phenomenology, cultural translation, and the experience economy, it considers how textual interpretation, spatial encounter, and digital reconstruction reshape the relationship between object and viewer. Examples from World Museum Liverpool, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Digital Dunhuang show that immersive technologies can restore certain lost relations while also producing new forms of abstraction and spectacle. The essay therefore proposes a shift from object-centred display toward relational curation, developed through the concepts of interpretive distance, critical immersion, and the Relational Curatorial Loop.
Buddhist art; cross-cultural curation; museum studies; cultural translation; embodiment; immersive exhibition; digital heritage; sculpture
Qiantong (Pei Ying) Wong. Beyond the Label: Understanding, Perception and Immersion in the Cross-Cultural Curation of Buddhist Images. Frontiers in Art Research (2026), Vol. 8, Issue 3: 80-88. https://doi.org/10.25236/FAR.2026.080311.
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