□ Yuedi
Thematic museums are often professional, niche, and unpopular, but the China Silk Museum has achieved a gorgeous transformation, and the ranking of passenger flow, activity, reputation, and popularity can compete with the "senior big guys" of comprehensive museums such as the Palace Museum and the Dunhuang Museum, and it is even more stable in the list of thematic museums. The China Silk Museum, located at the foot of Yuhuang Mountain on the banks of Hangzhou's West Lake, has gone through 30 years, and its success has made people see the unlimited potential of thematic museums.
Silk is a representative of Chinese aesthetics
Silk is the crystallization of the wisdom of the ancient Chinese. The domestication of wild silkworms into silkworms is a major achievement in the history of human civilization. In addition to silkworm farming, silk weaving jacquard technology is also a great invention of China. Needham, a historian of science, has listed 26 scientific and technological achievements that China has contributed to the world, starting with English letters, including pedal looms and jacquard machines. Among the four major inventions of China, we can also see the shadow of silk - the original meaning of paper refers to the accumulation of silk in the process of making silk wool, and the invention of printing is also related to letterpress printing on silk.
Silk is a representative of Chinese aesthetics and fashion. "Don't look at the ancient head in the box, you are in love with the new in the machine." The colorful and colorful splendid embroidery reflects people's unremitting pursuit of beauty. The innovation of the brocade pattern pattern of the past generations is not only the expression of the artistic creativity of the Chinese nation, but also the result of multicultural integration and mutual learning. Emperor Wen of Sui ordered He Chou to imitate Persian brocade to bring a new style to the Central Plains brocade weaving; Tang Taizong asked Dou Shilun to supervise the creation of Shu brocade in Yizhou, the first Lingyang gongdu, combining the Western Tuanqi animal pattern with the Central Plains flower pattern, which was popular for centuries; Tang Xuanzong's concubine Liu Jieyu invented the skeleton version of the valerian, which was passed down from the palace to the people...
Social education is one of the basic functions of museums. In order to better connect the primary school curriculum with the traditional silkworm culture, the China Silk Museum has launched an activity that integrates knowledge, fun and entertainment - everyone raises silkworm babies. The museum distributed a free silkworm baby science kit to all participating school students, including 20 silkworm babies, 2 silkworm baby feeding boxes, feeding manuals, and fresh mulberry leaves needed throughout the process. In the process of raising silkworm babies, if students encounter any problems, they can seek help from the professional teachers of the sericulture base of the China Silk Museum through the Internet.
In addition, the China Silk Museum will also organize local students to go to the sericulture base "Xiaoyunlong Sericulture Park" to collect fresh mulberry leaves on the spot, get close to green nature, and let students raise silkworm treasures for themselves
A total of more than 70 well-known domestic fashion designers, embroidery masters, cross-border artists and related institutions were invited, and a total of 114 fashion embroidery works (sets) were exhibited. With fashion as the main axis, the exhibition explains the embroidery in the context of fashion through five sections, such as "Sexual Spirit Silkworm Tranquility", "Living Color and Fragrance", "Cool Tide", "Colorful in the Ground" and "Diversified Future".
At the same time, another New Year's Eve exhibition at the China Silk Museum, "Modernity on top: Western fashion hats from the 19th to the 20th century", was also unveiled. The exhibition sorts out the hats in the Collection of Western Fashion in the Collection of the China Silk Museum, and recreates the modern style of Western fashion hats from the 19th to the 20th century by excavating the historical background, artistic characteristics, category functions, brand stories, etc. of fashion hats.
This year, the China Silk Museum has been established for 30 years. The China Silk Museum was completed and opened on February 26, 1992, and has been open to the public free of charge since January 1, 2004. In 2015, the renovation and expansion project was started, and in September 2016, it was presented to the visitors with a new look.
It's not easy for a museum to be vibrant. At first, the China Silk Museum was a pure silk museum focusing on the industry, mainly to display the silk collection produced in the industry, and at most to find and collect some ancient collections, and the attractiveness of the exhibition content to the public was very limited.
In order to change the dilemma, the curator Zhao Feng did a lot of thinking. "As a museum, first of all, we must inherit and protect cultural heritage, carry out in-depth excavation and research, and on this basis, widely disseminate the value of cultural relics, and promote some application design, so that traditional clothing culture can enter people's lives and become the beauty of living in the present." Zhao Feng said.
The breakthrough point of transformation is the word "fashion". The China Silk Museum has been showing silk fashion at the beginning of its establishment, but it has really been done as a major section since 2010. In order to increase the collection and attract the attention of the society, the librarians take the initiative to go to the market to understand fashion information, go to the enterprise to understand the fashion industry, go to the school to understand fashion education, find designers to understand fashion trends, and the grasp is to do a fashion retrospective exhibition once a year.
Since 2011, the China Silk Museum has launched its first fashion exhibition "Discover · FASHION: 2011 Annual Fashion Review", from the aspects of clothing and fabrics, home textile fabrics and finished products, clothing and fashion information, presents the fashion landscape of China, and truly introduces the concept of fashion into the museum exhibition.
At the same time, the China Silk Museum has also extended its fashion vision to the world, and in 2011 began to implement the overseas textile and apparel collection plan, collecting more than 300 overseas collections, including silk textile products from China's participation in the World Expo in France and Germany a hundred years ago, Chinese export silk in the 19th century, and overseas Chinese qipao. In 2013, nearly 40,000 pieces of modern Western fashion were collected again.
The rich collection gives the China Silk Museum a confidence. The museum set up a special fashion hall in the construction of the new museum, and in 2016, it was renovated and expanded to complete the opening, launching two basic exhibitions focusing on Chinese and Western fashion - "Changing Clothes: Chinese Fashion Art Exhibition" and "From The Pastoral to the City: 400 Years of Western Fashion". In particular, the latter makes up for the lack of international perspective of the mainland's state-owned museums, which are mainly domestic collections. It is also from this time that the China Silk Museum will launch the "Fashion Season" exhibition every year, attracting attention at home and abroad.
Creative heritage
The value of silk can be more interpreted. In Zhao Feng's view, although the museum collects the heritage of the past, it should not be separated from the current life. In the critical period of transformation from "Made in China" to "Created in China", the importance of cultural creativity has become increasingly prominent, and silk is an indispensable part of it.
The China Silk Museum is one of the first batch of pilot units for the development of cultural and creative products in national museums. In 2010, the museum and Kaixia International Co., Ltd. jointly established Hangzhou Jingluntang Cultural and Creative Co., Ltd. As a high-end cultural silk brand in China, Jingluntang has developed 62 series of 224 new silk culture products around the themes of "auspicious", "Silk Road" and "Year of clouds" and other themes, among which the "Huamei Zhiyuan" square scarf was selected for the G20 Hangzhou Summit commemorative ceremony.
In 2016, the China Silk Museum established the "Hangzhou Jindao Culture and Art Company", using the cultural relics resources in the collection, designing and producing 48 kinds of cultural and creative products in four series, such as stationery, clothing, household necessities and decoration categories, and at the same time developing more than 140 products in combination with the museum's temporary exhibition and major activities. Among them, the "Silk Road Week" series of cultural and creative products won the bronze medal of the Tourism Commodity Competition with Chinese characteristics, the Outstanding Achievement Award of cultural and creative product development of the National Museum, and the National Top 100 Cultural and Creative Products.
In 2018, the China Silk Museum cooperated with Microsoft Research Asia to design and produce "Song Zhi YaYun" products using the artificial intelligence of "Microsoft Xiaoice", and the products that integrate a variety of Song Dynasty silk patterns are very Song Yun and fashionable, which has become a useful attempt of artificial intelligence design in the field of inheriting and developing silk culture.
In addition, in order to guide the service of a better life, especially to revitalize traditional crafts, the China Silk Museum has set up a special female red transmission hall. Textile and clothing belonged to the female red range in ancient times, so the name of female red was adopted, but the activity was not limited to women.
The source of the Female Red Transmission Hall comes from the lady's activities at the G20 summit. In order to cooperate with the event, the China Silk Museum specially planned the female red interaction to show the inheritance of traditional silk craftsmanship in China. Due to its popularity, the event was retained.
At present, the Female Red Transmission Hall is divided into two levels, one is the daily course, and the other is the advanced course. The daily curriculum has formed a number of series such as weaving, weaving, dyeing, embroidery, sewing, etc., and nearly 100 courses are opened every year, and the learners are mainly primary and secondary school students, mainly to cultivate interest. Advanced seminars began to be established in 2017, four sessions a year combined with exhibitions, the courses that have been opened are comprehensive plate looms, jacquard machines, batik, tie-dyeing, etc., mainly for graduate students, teachers, designers, handicraft enthusiasts and other adult groups, the training goal is to apply what they have learned, running for many years, cultivating a large number of practical talents.
The cold door is not cold, thirty and standing. Today, the 30-year-old China Silk Museum has become a good place to chase fashion trends and understand international clothing trends, and because of the elegant environment and rich collection, it is easy to "produce films", and the museum has countless fans on social media. From Menkolo To Menting Ruoshi, the experience of the China Silk Museum can bring many enlightenments to the thematic museums.