Why a museum catalog can become a censorship battleground
The Victoria and Albert Museum in London removed maps and images from at least two recent exhibition catalogs after a Chinese printing company objected to material it said ran afoul of China’s censorship rules, according to documents obtained through freedom of information requests. The episode, reported by The Guardian, has drawn attention to the quiet compromises that can shape museum publishing when institutions outsource production abroad.
The material in question touched on subjects Beijing treats as politically sensitive, including maps that referenced China, as well as topics such as Tiananmen Square, Tibet, and Taiwan. In one case, the changes affected the catalog for “Music Is Black,” which opens Friday. The publication included a 1930s map illustrating trade routes of the British Empire, including territory that encompassed China.
An email from C&C Offset Printing to the museum said a map on page 10 related to China and that the printer needed to use “standard maps from [the] Chinese government.” It suggested deleting the image or replacing it. Internal V&A correspondence shows staff scrambling to adjust production, with one email noting that printing had paused while files were amended. The map was meant to accompany an introduction by Gus Casely-Hayford, director of V&A East.
The museum also agreed to remove content from the catalog for its 2021 exhibition “Fabergé: Romance to Revolution,” including another map and a photograph of Vladimir Lenin. In an email to one of the curators, the production team said the Chinese printer could not print the book with the “revolution/Lenin image” at the start of the essay. The writer added that the list of restrictions was “ever changing.”
The V&A described the edits as minor, saying it sometimes prints in China but maintains close editorial oversight and would halt production if a requested change felt problematic. The museum said the revisions did not alter the narrative.
The broader issue is not unusual collaboration with overseas printers — major institutions including the British Museum and Tate also work with foreign production partners — but the leverage such arrangements can create. The Tate and the British Library said they have not encountered censorship problems in production, while the British Museum declined to comment. For museums, the question is increasingly not only what they publish, but where and under whose rules it is printed.
