One beam and one pillar, one stone and one tile freeze the old time. A "stone" museum, quietly standing on the banks of the Tang River, literati inkers, Zen camellias, like-minded people, bustling and returning. The Qing lantern market, which sprouted from the Qingdeng Stone Carving Art Museum, has quickly become the new "traffic IP" of the national market in a very short period of time, and has also made the public notice the "museum fever".
The 13th Party Congress of Wenzhou City clarified the urban positioning of "Millennium Commercial Port and Happy Wenzhou", and proposed to "build the city of China's private museums", which put the city of China's private museums in an unprecedented prominent position. In recent years, Wenzhou private museums have shown a vigorous trend, according to statistics, as of 2021, Wenzhou has registered a total of 30 private museums, as a useful supplement to Wenzhou's state-owned museums, they have become an important part of the museum system.
Private museums are in the ascendant
Step out of the innovation road of "raising a museum with a museum"
Some people say that to get to know a city quickly, going to a museum is the most convenient way. Inside, there are iconic artifacts unique to the region. Hu Nianwang, director of the Cultural Relics Department of the Municipal Bureau of Culture, Radio, Film and Tourism, said that the museum should become the first attraction for foreign tourists, the second classroom for students in the city where they are located, and the third space for the leisure life of local citizens.
Ye Tong Ren Museum of Traditional Chinese Medicine
In recent years, Wenzhou's private museums have blossomed everywhere, and a number of industrial museums such as Ye Tongren Museum of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Yueqing Tiefengtang Dendrobium Museum, Longwan Baishui Folk Museum, Dongtou Donghai Shell Sculpture Museum, and so on have emerged; Longwan Yongchang Museum, The History Education Center for Resisting US Aggression and Aiding Korea, Ruian Longshan Zhiqing Museum, Yueqing Puqi Folk Museum, and other museums that integrate patriotic education and revolutionary party history education and research experience.
Since 2007, Wang Hesheng, a descendant of Wang's dyeing workshop who originally lived in Beijing, returned to his hometown in Ruian, established the Indigo Professional Cooperative in the village to start large-scale cultivation of indigo, and began to raise funds to build the Wenzhou Blue Jacket Valerian Museum in 2008. Since its opening in 2010, the museum currently has more than 1,000 physical exhibits, and has developed many derivatives such as indigo, qingdai, banlan root tea, blue flower cloth, etc., and has embarked on a new path of innovation and income generation in private museums, basically achieving the goal of "maintaining the museum with the museum". In recent years, they have also actively participated in cultural and creative and agricultural exhibitions throughout the country.
Rice bucket ladders, sugar grinders, festive wedding cars... At the Longwan White Water Folk Museum, old objects let people "travel through" time. Jiang Ruiyu is the owner of this folk museum, his other identity is the owner of a valve company in Longwan District, in his view, in recent years, the old objects of the folk are getting less and less, and their loss has also taken away cultural memory, "I built this museum in the hope of making some efforts to preserve these 'cultural specimens'." In the process of several years of establishment, the Baishui Folk Customs Museum has also carried out various forms of cooperation with the Wenzhou Museum, and signed the intention of helping and building together in business activities such as collection lending, collection protection, cooperative exhibition, exhibition and exhibition, and extensively carried out all-round exchanges and cooperation.
It is easy to "raise" the museum
The "Yang" pavilion needs more fine water and long flow
Speaking of why Wenzhou thought of building a "city of private museums in China", Hu Nianwang, director of the Cultural Relics Division of the Wenzhou Municipal Bureau of Culture, Radio, Film and Tourism (Cultural Relics Bureau), introduced that Wenzhou, as the birthplace of the mainland's private economy, has the advantage of being the first to try first and the spirit of bold innovation. Wenzhou's museum field of cultural relics "revitalization and utilization + social participation" has become a consensus, After Wenzhou's economic development into a comprehensive well-off, people's material life is more and more abundant, it will have a need for the spiritual field, culture and art and beauty of life. As a building with more than 5,000 years of civilization history, more than 2,200 years of institutional history, more than 1,680 years of urban planning history, more than 1,000 years of commercial port history, Wenzhou entrepreneurs, artists, and cultural people have had the psychological pursuit of collecting and studying elegant play since ancient times, and now all kinds of collections are popular among the people, almost every artifact has a touching story behind it, and the museum, as the most direct "story teller", has a unique advantage in disseminating information.
"It's easy to open a museum, but it's hard to 'raise' a museum!" Gao Qixin, deputy director of the Wenzhou Museum, said, "'Raising' the museum is a process of fine water and long flow, and many private collectors often can't keep up with the later operation after opening the museum." And Hu Nianwang pointed out that private museums mainly have their own operating funds, lack of professional knowledge and talent and other issues, Wenzhou Museum Director Dong Shu believes that the biggest dilemma of private museums is "how to continue", many descendants of private collectors are not interested in cultural relics and museums, that is, museums may appear "no successor" situation.
During the "two sessions", Zhang Jincheng, member of the Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and director of the Qingdeng Stone Carving Art Museum, also submitted the "Proposal on Building the Tanghe Museum Group and Helping to Create a City of Private Museums in China", which put forward the specific manifestations of the difficulty of "raising" museums: First, the agglomeration effect is not obvious; Second, the regional characteristics are not prominent enough, and there are problems such as single products and similar positioning; Third, the industrial support is not strong.
"Private" and "public" complement each other
Overcoming the predicament requires the efforts of all parties
Dong Shu said that compared with the "big and complete" of public museums, private museums are characterized by "small and specialized", with distinctive characteristics, which are beneficial and complementary to public museums. At present, Ouhai, Dongtou, Ruian, Yueqing, Yongjia and other places have successively issued supporting documents to reward and supplement local non-state-owned museums, and use the technical and talent advantages of state-owned museums in the jurisdiction to carry out pairing and supporting state-owned museums.
Blue Lantern Stone Carving Art Museum
Gao Qixin introduced that the Wenzhou Museum, as a first-class museum, leads the "program" of the city, and has established a help and co-construction agreement with more than ten museums, and the special museum uses the cultural security units of the four major historical districts of the old city in the form of "flower arrangement" to create a pattern of one museum and one person (thing). The museums along the Tanghe River have begun to take shape, relying on the Qingdeng Stone Carving Art Museum to establish a cultural collection - the Qingdeng Market has gradually entered a better state; Yanyuan Art Museum has broken through the barriers of cultural relics between state-owned museums and non-state-owned museums, and has led the way in highlighting the culture of local celebrities. The White Water Folk Museum in Longwan is a big article of cultural tourism that is deep and suitable for integration and can be fully integrated. Through the integration and activation of resources, the formation of display + catering + cultural and creative "one-stop" financial and entrepreneurial state, to maximize the release of cultural consumption vitality.
Longwan White Water Folk Museum
Next, the city will increase the support for private museums, such as further simplifying the approval process, clarifying the specific connotation of policy support and preferential treatment, establishing a reward mechanism, providing land use guarantees and other conveniences, of course, to break the dilemma also requires the efforts of all parties, not only purely relying on the government "blood transfusion", "private" itself also needs to work hard to accelerate the pace of development.
The establishment of private museums is not only an important carrier for inheriting and developing Wenzhou's "millennium commercial port" culture, but also an important platform for activating popularity and gathering business sentiment, and building a city of private museums in China will bring new opportunities for the development of Wenzhou.
Source: Wenzhou Evening News
Preliminary Editor: Wang Yanyan
Editor-in-charge: Gu Zhangtong
Auditor: Miao Jianli
Chief Producer: Chen Taisheng
Producer: Wu Xiao, Chen Xiyu
Director system: Chen Zhenshi