Editor's note: The Douban Institute of Museology is an academic research group with museology peers, which initiates a reading meeting on the classic works of museology every year to discuss related academic issues. We are honored to be authorized to reprint to you to enlighten scholars.
From 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. on December 11, the Douban Museology Research Institute held its 7th book club of the semester. This book club was shared by Zhang Jiangchi. The sharing consists of two parts, the first part is the exhibition sharing, and the second part is the living and learning experience.
1. Share
1. Fragments
Stitch together the impressions of Shanghai in the museum, relics and neighborhoods
I've roughly divided the museums, sites, and neighborhoods I've visited over the past three months into the following four categories. Among them, "remembering" represents my favorite category, while "remembering" is slightly inferior, "mixed" means that some parts of these museums are doing well, some parts are not doing well, and "disappointed" is because it has not met my expectations at all.
When sharing, because of time and preparation, it is only the focus of sharing the three pavilions that are "unforgettable", and then there are friends who see the above listed, or not listed, and if they want to communicate further, we can continue to communicate.
Remember
Shanghai Museum of Natural History
▲ For more details about the main building, see Yun Xuan:
Encountering Nature at the Shanghai Museum of Natural History
"Nong visited the exhibition" 2021-09-27
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The Shanghai Museum of Natural History basically meets all my personal expectations for a natural museum, with the before and after stages of the timeline, the rich content design, and the attention to the local natural ecology in the macro evolution of the earth, as well as the origin of human beings and the interaction between man and nature. The content is rich and meticulously unified, and there is also a natural display of "living". The introduction of indigenous African art has made the display of the African part no longer purely wild nature, and the "Nature Notes" in the Shanghai story also allows us to see the possibility of children's participation. The Darwin Centre provides an excellent "laboratory" for biological evolution, and in the end all the demonstrations return to the question of how humans relate to their natural environment.
In addition to these advantages, Shangzibo also made me think of a question, is it a herbarium of animals and plants or a museum of nature?
Ming Museum of Contemporary Art
▲ For more details about the museum, see Qiu Zhijie's studio:
"This Is Not an Art Museum– Written on the Occasion of the Fifth Anniversary of the Ming Dynasty"
Similarly, the Ming Contemporary Art Museum also satisfied my imagination of an art museum. Experiment is its core, experimentation and cross-border are its basic directions, and media art, body art, performance art, dance and drama are its specific landing plans. It was doing a five-year retrospective when I got here, so had the privilege of seeing what it did. "Workers' Cultural Palace", "The Birth of a Shopping Mall", "MingHe Motor" and "Together Nomadic 2020-21" are some of my favorite units/exhibitions, which not only explore some of the problems that have emerged in China's rapid social development in the past few decades, but also try to communicate art, technology and people, hoping to provide their own imagination for the future.
In addition to these advantages, the disadvantage of Ming contemporary is that the sense of space of the overall display space may be more mechanical and less friendly to the audience.
Wuzhong Museum
▲ For more details about this exhibition, please refer to the Wu Culture Museum:
"New Exhibition Preview | Paradise of the World - Wuxian Cultural Relics Digital Exhibition"
The Wuzhong Museum seems to represent a new possibility for traditional historical and archaeological museums. Among the several permanent exhibitions, Archaeological Exploration of Wuzhong is the best archaeological exhibition ever seen in recent years. The extension of the exhibition realizes the intersection from things to people, from things to situations, and from a single discipline to discipline, just from the content point of view, "Archaeological Exploration of Wuzhong" has better explained these long-standing objects to the audience. After that, the "wind, elegance, and praise" enriched our understanding of Wuzhong from the perspectives of natural environment, folk customs, fine cultural relics, and Wu local dialect. This sharing highlights the temporary exhibition "Paradise of the World", which not only integrates investigation, collection, research and display for the first time, but also shows us the multiple possibilities of a historical building exhibition in terms of affinity and information richness. The curators introduced the curatorial ideas in detail, the team members who participated in the ancient architecture survey wrote down their survey diaries, the digitized results of the survey were visualized through 3D printing, and the attention to the different scales of the halls, courtyards, communities and the whole Wu County also showed us the many possibilities of traditional Chinese architecture, space and settlement concepts.
In addition to these advantages, the disadvantage of Wuzhong Museum may be that there is a lot of deconstruction of information, the information is too dense, and it may not be friendly to ordinary visitors.
In addition, I hope that one day I can have a better exhibition of historical buildings at the Shanxi Museum that goes beyond "Paradise of the World".
Never forget
Shanghai Jewish Refugees Memorial Hall
The Shanghai Jewish Refugees Memorial Museum undoubtedly provides us with details of Jewish refugees living in Shanghai, and the vivid history gives people a strong sense of presence. But in terms of the density of information and the degree of combination of objects and auxiliary displays, it seems that more effort is needed.
Shanghai Mental Health Center's Gallery No. 600
▲ For more details about the museum, please refer to the Beijing News Commentary:
"After the "Spirit Cake" "Gallery 600" is out of the circle again"
The Shanghai Mental Health Center's "Gallery 600" shows us "native works of art" left behind by patients who were once there. As a marginalized group, people with mental disorders rarely receive positive reviews. This exhibition uses two corridors in the office area of the mental health center to show the audience the rich spiritual world of these patients, and also allows us to see the audience and their interaction. From the perspective of the selected topic and the way of display, this is undoubtedly an object that many small museums and even all social public institutions can refer to. However, in terms of the design of the exhibition space and the interpretation of information, it still has some room for effort.
Gu Weijun Memorial Hall
The Gu Weijun Memorial Hall is a successful example of the small character memorial, and the audience can not only understand his great achievements in the field of modern diplomacy through the exhibition, but also see Gu Weijun's life from the perspective of a "person". In the "League of Nations Investigation Team" section, the curators even used the work of the niche but high-quality animation production group "Chinese Choir", which made me admire their carefulness. However, the reason why this memorial can be successful has something to do with Gu Weijun's own legendary experience, and its reference value for other museums needs to be further analyzed.
Pudong Art Museum
▲ For more details about this exhibition, please refer to the MAP of Pudong Art Museum:
"MAP Opening Exhibition | "Light: Treasures from the Tate Collection"》
The Pudong Art Museum is the popular art museum of this year's fire, and I spent three hours only watching an exhibition at the Tate Gallery in the United Kingdom, which borrowed it, showing the changes of "light" in art and people's lives from a historical dimension. But the museum does not have its own collections, and the question of institutional nature is still a topic worth exploring.
UCCA Edge
"Your Friend, My Friend"
"Nong's Exhibition of Logging"2021-12-12.
UCCA Edge's "Liu Xiaodong: Your Friend" exhibition is seen in the past three months, and it is also the second time in the past few years that we have seen such a wonderful exhibition about individual artists. The curator presented Liu Xiaodong's works from several aspects, such as the painter's hometown and friends, his experience of staying abroad during the epidemic, and the painter's concern for marginalized groups and vulnerable groups, which made me constantly reflect on my relationship with my friends, relatives and the world I live in.
Mixed feelings
Suzhou Museum West Building
The opening of the West Hall of Suzhou Museum should be one of the hottest things in the cultural and expo circle in the second half of the year, which not only divides the museum into several different pavilions such as the History Exhibition Hall, the Exploration Experience Hall, and the Su Zuo Craft Hall, but also creates an international cooperation hall and plans the exhibition in cooperation with the British Museum. Whether it is from the arrangement of the museum or the content design, the Subosi Pavilion shows us the vigorous vitality of Suzhou in the field of culture. Unfortunately, the historical exhibition of the Subossi Pavilion is not widely recognized, and in my opinion, it pays too much attention to art design and is not satisfactory in content design.
Participatory museum and community building in Hongqiao Airport Village
▲ For more details about the main building, see Big Fish Construction:
Exhibition | "We Are All Airport People" is a wonderful sneak peek
Community building and education have always been two of the things that drew my attention to museums, and the Airport Village Participatory Museum and SUSAS (Shanghai Urban Space Art Season) are two surprises that Shanghai has given me in this regard. The Airport Village Participatory Museum in Hongqiao is more like a community center, where residents of the community can use this as a center of activity, discuss issues closely related to their lives, and become an important channel for solving community problems and creating intimate relationships. The exhibitions in the museum also provide an important medium for everyone to understand the past and present of community development. The Shanghai Urban Space Art Season is relatively more diverse, and art and museums have stepped out of the "world of museums" and into the "world of thousands of worlds", restoring the special relationship between people and reality to reality. We can see that it not only changes the landscape of the city and makes it look better, but more importantly, it gives people in the city a reason to stay, and residents in the community can work together with community workers for a better future. However, the fly in the ointment is that some parts still show more significance than they actually mean, and it is difficult to determine whether the diverse groups in the community have really been helped.
2. Disenchantment
Where can I find Shanghai?
Shanghai stitched together in fragments is like a three-piece set of Lujiazui from different perspectives, the city is no longer mysterious, and its beauty and beauty are gradually displayed in front of me, just like the feeling of entering Shanghai University. In recent years, the archaeology and literature discipline of Shanghai University has developed rapidly, and the industry has received rave reviews, and many top experts from various sub-disciplines have joined. However, in fact, in the process of learning, it will be found that whether it is course design or learning experience, it is difficult to achieve "first in the industry", and even because of the lack of historical accumulation and other reasons, it will be regrettable in some aspects. But Shanghai's significance doesn't stop there, and Shangda is also a treasure trove worth exploring. As one of the viewers said to me during the audience survey, come here, protect yourself, and try other freely.
Staying in a small city for a long time in Shanghai will be very uncomfortable, and the campus in Jiading makes this discomfort even further. Most of the time I live in the old city on the outskirts of the city, and the central city twenty or thirty kilometers away is like another city. Commuting, playing, visiting, and learning between two different "cities" is always the problem of changing identity thinking. But this seems to indicate that this city has provided me with more tempering and more possibilities for thinking.
Unfortunately, because there is no multi-media material, this sharing is still a flat sharing, and I hope that more videos, virtual displays and other forms can be added later. We also hope to invite more diverse participants to communicate with each other.
▲More and more detailed shanghai living and learning experience
See Yun's "Xiaojiang Watching the Exhibition and Seeing the Sea" public account column
Discussion
1. Exhibition or text?
Wuzhong Museum, Gu Weijun Memorial Hall
When facing wuzhong museum's "Paradise in the World", most people will be impressed by its exquisite content design and rich knowledge and information, but we can also feel that there are too many texts in this exhibition and too few physical objects (mostly 3D printed models), so it gives people an impression that the information is too dense and not friendly to ordinary visitors. Similarly, when visiting a similar memorial (or modern history) museum at the Gu Weijun Memorial Hall, we will also find that there are too few cultural relics exhibited, and there are too many pictures and text information. Faced with this situation, how do we distinguish between such an exhibition as an exhibition or a text or a treatise or a catalogue?
Zhang Shuliang
For such a problem, we can think from the perspective of difference. For example, when we look at this exhibition at the Wuzhong Museum, how different is it from looking at a paper? If the two experiences are different and large enough, we cannot say that such an exhibition is a paper or a text. So it still depends on the personal experience in the exhibition.
Pan Zhiyan
The exhibition is a place with space, it is not only a very separate experience when individuals see the exhibition, it can also be carried out with friends or family, and it is a space that can create a common experience. From this point of view, the exhibition is still different from the text, even if it has very few physical objects, many words and pictures.
Zhao Guiling
For such exhibitions with few or no exhibits, the Hangzhou Southern Song Dynasty Guanyao Museum recently launched "Who Is He?" The "Exploring the Tomb of Lan Ruo Temple" exhibition is a good example and reference. The exhibition is limited by the fact that there are very few relics unearthed from the tombs of the Southern Song Dynasty royal family - the tomb itself does not have a lot of burial items, and it is also excavated, it is more about showing the components of the ground building that remains of the tomb, and then using a lot of pictures and text. But what is ingenious about it is that it designs a story to lead the audience to uncover the information of this tomb from the perspective of a history lover "Song Xiaonan", such as who the owner of the tomb is and what the identity is, with such a story line for the audience to explore in the process of watching the exhibition. In this way, visiting the exhibition is a process of decryption for the audience. This is actually a bit similar to the feeling of making an exhibition into a script. This may be a good example for such exhibitions with a relatively large amount of pictures and text information.
▲ More detailed content about this exhibition
See the Southern Song Dynasty Official Kiln Pavilion area of the Hangzhou Xibo General Museum:
Exhibition | Who is he - exploring the tomb of Lan Ruo Temple " exhibition opens today "
Another of the more divergent ideas is, can we now define the exhibition as a form that is clearly different from other media? Because we can see that the current exhibition is actually a collection of various media, of which text is a very important medium, and a variety of interactive games, film and television images are the media it can use, forming a good integration in the exhibition. But does this make the exhibition clearly different from other media?
Another problem is that we will find that various narratives in other media can be transformed into each other, movies can be adapted into games, can be adapted into novels... But as far as exhibitions are concerned, we can see a wide variety of other mediums becoming an exhibition, but rarely we see an exhibition becoming other mediums (except for exhibition albums).
Wang Bin
One of the characteristics that distinguishes the exhibition from other media is the physical objects in the exhibition, especially the three-dimensional objects. But if an exhibition has little or no physical objects, what is the difference between this exhibition and other media? This is another place for us to think about, because now there seems to be more and more exhibitions without physical objects (especially cultural relics and specimens in the traditional sense).
And now the concept of three-dimensional space is also blurred. Just like VR technology, all kinds of experiences can actually be simulated in the foreseeable future, and this line will definitely become more and more blurred. In this context, it is interesting to consider where the special features of the exhibition are.
In my personal opinion, the most special thing about the exhibition is its inclusiveness, that is, it can accommodate other media forms in the exhibition, but it seems that it is difficult to accommodate other media in other media forms. Therefore, I think that in the form of media fusion display, serving such a theme and presenting the content can be regarded as a special feature of an exhibition.
2. Community center or museum?
Hongqiao Airport Village Participatory Museum
This question is actually a relatively long-standing topic. In his 1971 essay "Museums, Temples or Forums," Cameron saw this problem. In the 1960s and 1970s, when new institutions such as science centers and neighborhood museums appeared, the museum community faced an identity crisis, and questions were raised about whether the Anakoustia Neighborhood Museum could be named "museum". The concept of ecological museums in the 1970s and 1980s further questioned and broke through the definition and boundaries of traditional museums. As a result, both the International Association of Fairs and the American Association of Museums have debated how to develop an accurate definition of a museum. In recent years, it seems that more and more institutions, organizations or phenomena have been named "museums", some of which may be explained by "museum-based expansion", but more are borrowed from the name of museums and engaged in some other activities.
The Participatory Museum of Hongqiao Airport Xincun borrows the concept of a museum, probably because the museum has credibility and can bring residents a sense of happiness and gain. I think it's also a good derivative value of the museum. Moreover, participatory museums are not particularly results-oriented, and in the process of our participation in the planning of museum exhibitions, we find that various situations in them are constantly changing, and their curators also believe that this is an open and anyone can participate in the work. This is different from our usual impression that the exhibition as a project must have a beginning and an end, a plan, and so on. It may also be this flexibility that reflects the ability of museums to produce a community/community role in the process of continuous circulation.
3. Focus on marginalized groups
Shanghai Jewish Refugees Memorial Hall, Gallery 600
Whether it is the Jews who moved to Shanghai during World War II, or the contemporary mental patients, they seem to us and the public to be distant, strange and marginal. When social changes and trends of thought in the second half of the 20th century influenced the museum world, museums also changed from mainstream narrative and celebratory museums to places that focused on marginalized groups, reflected on and soothed the memories of previous suffering. Exhibitions such as the Shanghai Jewish Refugee Memorial Hall, Gallery No. 600 and Liu Xiaodong: Your Friend all reflect the philosophy and practice of local museums in this regard. These exhibitions present the unique lives, memories and stories of different marginalized groups, trying to change the forgetting, neglecting or prejudice of "mainstream groups".
Zhang Jiangchi
For Gallery 600, there is no major problem if you look at it from the perspective of display methods or practicality. It must have been an attempt to do so within limited conditions, and I feel that it also achieved its purpose, which was to make the audience aware of marginalized groups. Whether it is their creativity or their lives, at least this exhibition shows them, to the world, to the "not marginal" people, and the topic itself is very good.
The Jewish Memorial, if we ignore the problem of its excessive information, is actually a good exhibition. It tells not only about the Jewish refugees who were persecuted by the Nazis during World War II, but also about the relationship between Jews and Shanghai, the earliest Jewish settlement in Shanghai. It was conducted from the perspective of communication and interaction between the entire Chinese and the Jews. Then the specific display also achieves a combination of physical objects and auxiliary situations. As far as I'm concerned, it's a very successful exhibition. But the reason why I didn't put it in "Unforgettable" is because the amount of information is really too large, although I have been there twice, but I still haven't read all the text in it. In this respect, it has something to improve. As we can see, it uses a lot of words to tell a story. If the story is not presented in words, and only a picture is placed here, then this thing may lose its meaning, but if you want the audience to understand its meaning, it needs to be explained with a lot of words.
4. Jump out of history and archaeology to see the museum
Shanghai Museum of Natural History, Pudong Art Museum
Both museums and museology are closely linked to history and archaeology. Comprehensive history museums account for the majority of the number of museums, and most of the museology majors in universities are located under the disciplines of history and archaeology. Therefore, we tend to automatically imagine or reduce museums to historical and archaeological museums, while ignoring other types of museums. The museums and exhibitions we share today contain a very diverse range of themes, ranging from nature to art, as well as memorial and community museums, so we can take us to a more diverse picture of the museum.
In Zhang Jiangchi's sharing, he took the initiative to compare some of the curatorial ideas of natural museums with historical and archaeological museums, for example, both types of museums involve the theme of "human origin", but there are still some differences between them. The Shanghai Museum of Natural History's exhibition on the origin of mankind will give the audience a very clear feeling, which also includes some displays of people's close relatives orangutans and monkeys. Although the exhibits in the exhibition are basically reproductions, it feels very professional and will be clearer than the clues of human origins displayed in the history museum. Of course, the two have some similar shortcomings. For example, the "Fauna" display in the Natural Museum will be very similar to the "Archaeological Culture" display in the History Museum, showing all the excavated animal specimens in a very mechanized arrangement, and then attaching a small paragraph next to it to explain the meaning of the fauna. This is actually the same as archaeological culture, and it is difficult to understand without insiders.
The Pudong Art Museum represents a form of contemporary art museum, and it also has a unique way of operating and curating. But how to evaluate this "unique way" may require more careful consideration.
There are three exhibitions in the Pudong Art Museum, "Light: Treasures of the Tate Gallery", "Juan Miró: Woman, Bird and Star", and "Cai Guoqiang: The Journey and Return". Among them, "Light" is a collaborative exhibition between the Pudong Art Museum and the Tate Museum, but it is more suitable for everyone to "take pictures and punch cards" than some of the exhibition forms of the Tate Museum in the United Kingdom, which may be inappropriate, and is actually a feeling of blending commercial display. The design of the light inside it shining on the carpet through the window is actually to make the carpet look like that, which is a very magical form of display.
Its cooperation with Tate is for a period of five years, and it is currently supported by the government. But I don't know what kind of development model will be after that, nor how pudong art museum's own curators and Tate's curators will cooperate.
Mu Zhitong
The Pudong Art Museum should be opened by Lujiazui Group, in fact, it is an art museum without a museum access or museum qualification. Then, according to the staff of the museum, they also have no curators and no Catholic Ministry, and all the exhibitions are introduced. That is to say, basically the staff inside do not have much say to decide what exhibition to do, they generally cooperate with the outside world, and then move to the Pudong Art Museum for display.
For "Light: Tate Collection Exhibition", because of the cooperation with Tate at the beginning, Tate had higher requirements for the installation. At first, it was said that he wanted someone from Tate to come over, but because the situation abroad was more complicated and because of the epidemic, the person in charge who had planned to come could not come to China. Therefore, it takes a form of "cloud exhibition", that is, their entire exhibition process will be broadcast live. Now the exhibition of "Juan Miró" has also been postponed, and it may also take such a form of "cloud withdrawal" in the future.
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Originally published on the WeChat public account of the Institute of Museology
Author | Wang Bin Zhang Jiangchi
Editor| Yang Yichen
Works published in this public account (including the title and the layout design, text graphics, etc.) added by the editor shall not be reproduced, excerpted, adapted or otherwise used without the authorization of China Cultural Relics Newspaper, and if authorized to reprint, please indicate the source and author.