Paper short abstract:

This paper explores issues associated with the active representation and consumption of large historic buildings and heritage sites through the arts. Key questions are raised regarding the importance of such cultural signifiers in shaping dominant narratives of nation and engaging the tourist gaze.

Paper long abstract:

As vessels to represent specific cultural discourses surrounding notions of nationalism and identity, exhibitions—and the exhibits therein—assume a particular symbolism and meaning for the nation (McLean and Cooke, 2003). By portraying large material objects through the arts, such as historic photographs and paintings of heritage sites and buildings, exhibitions operate as a 'technology of nationhood' (Harvey, 1996), providing narrative possibilities for the imaging of a national 'brand' and the stimulation of tourist footfall (Urry and Larsen, 2011). In acknowledging the importance of attracting the tourist gaze through representing large objects and sites of national significance, the premise of this paper draws upon an exhibition entitled 'Romantic Scotland' that opened in Nanjing Museum, April 2017. Curated by Historic Environment Scotland and designed by Nanjing Museum, the exhibition included paintings and historic and modern photography of Scotland's most iconic buildings and heritage sites. Reflecting on a large data set obtained from a multi-method research project addressing the production/consumption of the 'Romantic Scotland' exhibition, this paper focuses upon the interpretation of such distinctive markers of nation and the importance of portraying large historic sites to shape a particular tourist identity. Here we draw out the complexities of positioning a nation, especially with respect to how large material objects, and a particular version of Scotland, was contoured to represent the object of tourists' attention. In so doing, we address important questions concerning the active (re)production and representation of place, culture and identity as it is consumed by an audience capable of extrapolating various meanings relational to their own positionality and cultural context.