Naturalistic aspirations, cultural education
——Talking about the new trend of the development of chinese university museums
Ding Ye
The museum is a place for public display and display, and the learning environment is rich and full of surprises. As one of the important categories of museums, university museums have developed rapidly in recent years with a high-spirited attitude. The latest fourth batch of national museum classification list shows that for the first time in the first-class museum camp, there are tsinghua university museums and Shandong University museum, respectively, Shanghai University Museum, Shanghai Jiao Tong University Qian Xuesen Library, Communication University of China Media Museum, China University of Geosciences Yifu Museum, Northeast Normal University Northeast Ethnic Folk Museum and other five university museums have become national second-level museums.
The 2019 Opinions of the Ministry of Education on Effectively Strengthening the Aesthetic Education of Colleges and Universities in the New Era clearly pointed out that "fully excavate the social service functions of art venues in colleges and universities, promote the inclusion of university art venues in the scope of the implementation of the free opening policy of national public cultural service institutions, and encourage qualified colleges and universities to open museums and art galleries to the society in an orderly manner". As the core of university art venues, university museums have the dual attributes of museums and universities, namely museum and university department attributes. The so-called museumability means that the university museum is a cultural and museum venue open to the society, providing cultural services for the public and playing a social service function, including the school history museum, the alumni memorial hall, etc.; at the same time, the university museum is also a second-level unit that highlights the campus culture and provides teaching and scientific research services for teachers and students of the whole university. In terms of the connotation and extension of the current development of university museums, they can be divided into the following three types: the display of professional disciplines in colleges and universities, the display of research achievements with university characteristics, and the development of comprehensive museums.
Infographic: The Ashmolean Museum at the University of Oxford is the first public museum in the UK, one of the earliest public museums in the world, and the largest and most abundant university museum in the world.
The primary function of the first type of university museums is the display space of professional disciplines, that is, each university combines its own discipline setting characteristics and gives advantageous majors a display platform, such as the China Accounting Museum of Shanghai Lixin Institute of Accounting and Finance, the Business Museum of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, the Shanghai Overseas Chinese University World Language Museum, etc. all belong to this category. This type of university museum carries the function of displaying, disseminating and promoting the characteristics and professional characteristics of the university to teachers, students, alumni and the public.
The second category is the museum of special research achievements of colleges and universities, such as the China "Comfort Women" History Museum of Shanghai Normal University. Su Zhiliang, director of the China "Comfort Women" Research Center of Shanghai Normal University, has been engaged in the study of the comfort women issue for more than 20 years, and he has drawn a map of the comfort stations confirmed by the research and placed them in the museum. The Li Changyu Court Science Museum of East China University of Political Science and Law contains a total of 163 boxes of exhibits donated by Li Changyu. The Museum of Oriental Musical Instruments of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music (more than 400 representative musical instruments (sets)) and the Chinese Martial Arts Museum of the Shanghai Conservatory of Sport (2147 pieces/sets of existing collections and 600 pieces/sets of precious cultural relics) belong to this category. The characteristics of this type of museum are to focus on a certain type of characteristic research results of universities, through the display of precious collections, storytelling, and presentation to the public.
The third category is the development of university museums to comprehensive museums, and the Shanghai University Museum belongs to this typical category. Although the Shanghai University Museum is young, it has been positioned as a comprehensive museum since its establishment, consisting of the Haipai Culture Museum, the Shanghai Dialect Culture Exhibition and Experience Hall (exhibition), the Shanghai University History Museum (exhibition), the Qian Weichang Memorial Hall (exhibition) and the Shanghai University (1922-1927) School History Outdoor Exhibition Area Traceable Garden Four Halls and One Park, with an exhibition area of 5500 square meters, which is currently the largest comprehensive museum of universities in Shanghai.
Compared with the social museum, the university museum "has the advantage of being rooted in the deep fertile soil of the university culture, an important symbol of the profound academic and cultural accumulation of the university, and the cradle of wisdom that condenses the spirit of the university.".
The university museum is not only a new force for the construction of college culture, but also a business card and a window for external display of colleges and universities, with strong professionalism.
Many of the collection resources of the university museum are historical witnesses to the development of a certain discipline, containing a rich spirit of governance and exploration, and there are shadows of people behind them, reflecting the distinct tradition of running schools in the university, and is the most important and intuitive display platform for the campus culture of the university.
As an important component of the campus humanistic environment and an important position in the construction of campus culture, the university museum is an important platform for inheriting the cultural genes of the school, carrying forward the cultural traditions of the school, highlighting the spiritual character of the school, displaying the characteristics and level of the school, and creating an important platform for the scientific and humanistic atmosphere of the school.
The university museum takes the school's respective cultural traditions, spiritual character, school-running philosophy and school-running practice as the growth point and rich fertile soil, highlights the school's own cultural characteristics and spiritual traditions from multiple angles and levels, continuously deepens the university culture and the construction of the university spirit as the key, innovates and carries out cultural activities with its own characteristics, innovates and builds a cultural platform with its own characteristics, and strives to build a school cultural gene inheritance.
The development of the times has given the university museum a higher mission. The university museum is not only a place for the display of characteristic disciplines of colleges and universities, but also a "big classroom" for cultural education. More and more colleges and universities realize that having a university museum of their own is not only an important platform for displaying the characteristics of school disciplines, but also an ideal place for cultural education. For example, the shanghai university of international business and economics museum where the author is located officially started construction in October 2021. As the only university with foreign economic and trade characteristics in the Yangtze River Delta region, Shanghai University of International Business and Economics believes that after the completion of the Shanghai University of International Business and Economics Museum, it will certainly bring a different economic and trade education experience to the public.
Group photo of the event
People need to go into college museums to enrich spiritual and cultural life, and college museums should also go out of colleges and universities and into the community. Some qualified colleges and universities have begun to "break out of the circle" and try cross-border integration. The "2021 No Questions West East Invitation Exhibition" unveiled by the China Art Palace on December 26, 2021 is a gratifying attempt. Jointly organized by Shanghai University and co-sponsored by Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, China Art Palace (Shanghai Art Museum), China Artists Association and Shanghai Artists Association, the exhibition brings together more than 200 groups (pieces) of works by 70 artists from around the world.
Related reports: "No Questions Asked" Opening: Experts on the "Three New Developments" of New Haipai, New Liberal Arts, and New Arts
In short, colleges and universities are places where people are systematically educated, museums were once called "second classrooms", and the common educational function and mission make museums and universities have a natural fate. In the history of the development of world museums, university museums occupy a pivotal position. China's economy is on the rise, and China's culture is more assertive. In this journey, the construction of Chinese university museums should not only undertake the academic research and teaching tasks of the school, but also participate more in public social services. "University + museum" is not only an academic institution, an educational space, but also a carrier of civilization. The construction of Chinese university museums in the new era should focus on social development, open the "wall", and create a "big classroom" for cultural education.
*Author: Ding Ye, Deputy Director of the Archives of Shanghai University of International Business and Economics January 1, 2022 Picture added by the editor
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