College of East Asian Studies

In the 19th century, generations of Wesleyan University graduates journeyed to China as Methodist missionaries. To raise awareness and generate funds for their sustained work, they sent thousands of objects home to the United States, shaping how American audiences at the time might have imagined China from afar. From chopsticks and shoes to herbal specimens and a brick taken from the Great Wall, the exhibition Collecting China presents only a fraction of what missionary alumni had shipped back from the East. Most of these objects are being presented for the first time in over a century. Raising questions about the way collecting and archival practices create meaning, Collecting China explores Wesleyan’s role in producing a knowable “China,” which became part of a larger project as evangelical Christianity and Western modernity worked to reform, relay, and remake a world across the Pacific.

The exhibition was curated by Sida Chu ’26 and Nancy Li ’28 as part of a tutorial in curatorial practice led by Assistant Director of Exhibitions and Assistant Curator of Education Rosemary Lennox and Associate Director and Curator of Visual Arts Benjamin Chaffee ’00. Exhibition support provided by the College of East Asian Studies. This exhibition was previously displayed earlier this year in Olin Library.


This exhibition will be closed October 24–27, 2026 and November 24–30, 2026.