At the end of 2022, Beijing was rated by the media as the city with the most "artistic atmosphere", among which "the number of art exhibition ticket buyers" and "the number of visitors" have become the focus of this indicator. After a year, with the joint efforts of art museums, curators, and audiences, what are the new changes in exhibitions in Beijing, which has the most "artistic atmosphere", and what are the new developments of the audience? Let's sort it out at the end of 2023.
Tourists from other places come to Beijing and love to "explore" the exhibition
According to the "2022 Year-end Observation of Domestic Exhibitions" released by Damai and Douyin Art, from the perspective of the audience of visitors, female users account for 68%, in addition to art exhibitions, trendy Internet celebrity exhibitions, ACG exhibitions, market markets, etc. are also popular among female users, and in terms of age distribution, 26 to 30 years old is the most favorite age group to watch exhibitions, accounting for 23.49% of users, followed by 21 to 25 years old (19.44%) and 31 to 35 years old (16.34%).
In 2023, a reporter from Beijing Youth Daily found that the crowd of people who attend the exhibition as a family unit is gradually expanding. Curator Gang Qiang told reporters: "With the deepening of aesthetic education in primary and secondary schools, more and more parents are willing to take their children into the art museum on weekends to feel the beauty. Especially during weekends, long vacations, winter and summer vacations, family audiences become one of the most important visitor flows of the museum. ”
At the same time, with the recovery of Beijing's cultural tourism industry, more and more tourists from other places come to Beijing to see the exhibition. In particular, some boutique exhibitions, such as "Beauty in the New Era: A Series of Exhibitions Celebrating the 60th Anniversary of the Founding of the National Art Museum of China", "Matisse's Matisse", "Yves Klein: Beyond Time and Space", and "2023 CAFA Graduation Season: Undergraduate and Graduate Graduation Exhibitions", have attracted many foreign tourists to Beijing to check in and explore the exhibition.
The exhibition adds a new interactive experience
As more and more family visitors return to the museum, "interactive exhibitions" have become more popular, and "playing together" with the audience has become a major attraction of this year's art exhibition. On the eve of this year's Children's Day, UCCA Lab Beijing Art Space will present a "Playable" exhibition for children, and "The World of Peter Rabbit: Eternal Adventure Picture Book Art Exhibition" will incorporate a number of interactive and handicraft experience projects such as "DIY Flower Garden", "Hide and Seek", "Rescue Peter Rabbit" and "Flower Pot Workshop" that the audience can participate in, so that children can Xi about animals and plants while exercising their hands-on skills.
The exhibition is loved by many family audiences, and during the exhibition, it has become an unmissable "Walking Baby Exhibition" in the 798 Park. Ms. Wang, who had taken her four-year-old daughter to see the exhibition, told a reporter from Beiqing Daily, "Since she was a child, her daughter has been influenced by picture book culture and is very familiar with "The Story of Peter Rabbit". Such a creative and innovative art exhibition made our eyes shine. ”
Not only did UCCA Lab choose to explore the new topic of "interactive exhibitions", but the National Museum of Classic Books in the National Library also chose to bring the "beautiful and fun" "Sherlock Holmes Large-scale Immersive Theme Exhibition" to the audience, where visitors can experience a variety of interactive games, such as serious murder through blurred photos, detective notes to find clues to the case, and so on.
The increasingly interesting art exhibitions have also made more audiences willing to enter the art museum in their leisure time. Wang Ning, a senior art curator, said: "In the early stage of art museum curation, the cross-border integration with immersive performing arts broke the mode and boundary of traditional art museum exhibition. Art museums are actually seeking to renew themselves. The new and more interactive experience can make the audience more willing to enter the art museum, bring more surprises to the people's cultural consumption experience, and inject vigorous impetus into the development of the cultural tourism industry. ”
Cross-border renovation, "playing" music in the art museum
This year, teamLab Wuxiang Art Space cooperated with the China Symphony Orchestra and China Oriental Performing Arts Group to hold concerts in the picturesque art museum, not only bringing Western instruments such as strings, harps, and marimba into the museum, but also integrating Chinese music and Chinese costumes such as erhu, guqin, and zhongruan with their own animation effects, so that the audience's perception of beauty can be upgraded from visual to audio-visual. Such a cross-border performance fills the atmosphere of the scene and extends the boundaries of art.
"It was a real pleasure to be able to attend a concert in the museum. Ms. Zhang, a visitor to the audience, said that the one-stop experience of online celebrity exhibitions and concerts made her feel worthwhile. Mr. Wang, who had attended this special concert before, told reporters, "It is the first time to listen to a concert in an art museum, and the immersive interactive activities have enriched the beauty of the museum. ”
An art museum can hold a single painting, but it can also hold more art forms. The "Crossover" concert is not the original creation of teamLab. This year, Encounter Museum will join hands with the China Symphony Orchestra to carry out a series of project cooperation "Meet the Museum, Encounter Classical Music" to jointly develop and provide high-quality public cultural and artistic products for the public. "The British Museum and the Louvre have hosted cross-border events such as music festivals and museum nights, which have fully unleashed the imagination of museums as cultural spaces. Wang Chunchen, director of the meeting museum and professor of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, said. It is believed that in the future, the cross-border cooperation of the museum will not only be music, but also integrated with various art forms such as literature and drama, and glow with more new colors.
Digital technology "revitalizes" cultural relics
In recent years, with the development of digital technology, art and technology have also been converging. More and more art museums are using digital technology to arrange exhibitions, which not only makes it more convenient for the audience to understand the historical and cultural background of cultural relics, but also makes it more convenient for them to digitally display and display them virtually, which also makes digital technology an important means to help "cultural relics come alive".
At the end of the year, Beijing Encounter Museum concluded with "Meet Ancient Shu: Sanxingdui Immersive Light and Shadow Art Exhibition". The exhibition features an immersive and interactive experience, with a special somatosensory interaction link, where the audience can generate a mirror image of their own ancient Shu body posture through fixed-point recognition, and as the body swings, the corresponding ancient Shu people also dance, as if modern people and ancient Shu people communicate across time and space. In addition to decorating the space with lights, these immersive exhibitions use digital technology to create an immersive feeling. Visitors can observe the cultural relics up close, which not only protects the cultural relics, but also optimizes the visitor experience. Visitors can also interact with the content of the theme section when viewing the exhibition.
Regarding the application of digital technology in the field of cultural and museological activities, Li Zhongmou, executive director of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Museum and former deputy director of the Shanghai Museum, pointed out that it is the general trend to apply digital technology and new technological means to the exhibition of traditional cultural relics. But there is still a long way to go in the future, not only to show the details of these invisible cultural relics, but also to dig out the stories behind the cultural relics through digital technology.
According to Xiang Pingping, a doctor of fine arts and curator of the Shanghai Art Museum, digital technology will bring a different experience to the future of art, and it can present historical scenes, myths and legends that we cannot experience in person, or things that cannot be seen in reality, in a vivid and immersive way, which is very magical.
Micro-inventory
1. The Most Valuable Exhibition: Special Exhibition of the 60th Anniversary of the Founding of the National Art Museum of China
This year, the most valuable art exhibition will recommend "Beauty in the New Era: A Series of Exhibitions for the 60th Anniversary of the Founding of the National Art Museum of China", which includes four theme exhibitions: "Tribute to the Classics", "Ink Rhyme and Context", "Tower High and Water Growing", and "Beauty and Beauty", focusing on nearly 600 classic art works collected by the National Art Museum of China.
A classic, always inspiring. The audience can feel the literati's sentiments and elegance in Su Shi's "Xiaoxiang Bamboo and Stone Drawing", Liu Haisu's "Yellow Mountain and Sea of Clouds" to experience the colorful light and weather, Qi Baishi, Xu Beihong, Lin Fengmian, Pan Tianshou and other Chinese art classics are all on display, and there are also famous works by foreign artists such as Pablo Picasso's oil paintings, Kaisui Kohlerhuich's prints, and Ansel Adams's photography.
Occupying the three exhibition halls on the first floor of the museum, the theme exhibition of "Tribute to Classics" can always be seen in the figure of people's heated discussions. These well-known works not only present the important collections and donations of the National Art Museum of China in its 60-year development history, but also witness the vigorous development of Chinese art and the fruitful results of international art exchanges since the founding of the People's Republic of China.
2. Curator with the most cross-border spirit: Tan Zhuo
On April 20, the Beijing International Film Festival co-actor and artist Tan Zhuo initiated the new highlight unit "Art Innovation Unit" of the Beijing Film Festival, and the first master film exhibition "The Poetics of Fantasy" at the UCCA Lab in Beijing.
This is a cross-border exhibition of film and art, and the Beijing Film Festival also realizes the dialogue between Chinese film practitioners and enthusiasts and the world's top art masters through the design of this artistic innovation unit, forming zero-distance exchanges and interactions, and opening up a new growth space and artistic and cultural value of "film +".
Tan Zhuo, the initiator of the project and the actor who participated in the curatorial work, became a key element in the smooth implementation of the exhibition, researching and creating something new, which is something that Tan Zhuo is very interested in in the process of making art: "For innovation, I think it takes courage and simplicity. ”
On the road to cross-border, Tan Zhuo has been exploring. At the end of last year, Tan Zhuo exhibited the digital video installation "Apocalypse" at the first Art Biennale in Beijing: "I think it is the vertical axis of an era, and in this era, both the art and film worlds are keen to talk about how the metaverse will land, and I have produced this work in this kind of thinking." Tan Zhuo said.
3. The most "tossed" art exhibition: Matisse's Matisse
Matisse's Matisse is this year's annual exhibition, and it is also the most "tossed" exhibition of the year. This exhibition selects more than 280 works of art by Matisse from the collection of the Musée Matisse in the Nord department of France in Le Cato Cambrezi, France, covering oil paintings, sculptures, drawings, ink on paper, prints, paper cuts, book illustrations, fabrics, etc., providing a comprehensive introduction to the artist Matisse. Patrice de Palp, director of the Musée Matis in the Nord department of France, said: "So almost all the collections can come to China, and there is a lot of room for selection. "Not only the audience in Beijing saw the exhibition, but also the audience in Shanghai in the second half of the year.
4. The most Beijing art exhibition: the first Beijing Art Biennale
When it comes to biennales, the most prestigious is the Venice Biennale, which has been held for nearly 60 sessions and can be called the "Olympic event" of the art world. This year, Beijing also has its own biennale, the "first Beijing Art Biennale" held at the beginning of the year.
Under the theme of "Symbiosis", the exhibition presents more than 390 works by 240 artists from 20 countries and regions. Feel the dialogue between contemporary art and other fields from the works of Chinese and foreign artists, take a glimpse of the magnificence of the Yungang Grottoes in the past with the help of digital technology, and stroll through the scenery of Beijing painted by the hundred-year-old painter Dai Ze...... Presenting the art of Beijing.
The exhibition format of this Biennale is also very distinctive, the exhibition adopts the "1+2+3" model, that is: one main venue (national foreign cultural trade base), two sub-venues (Beijing Friendship Store, Mumu Art Museum Qianliang Hutong Hall), and three exhibition forms (theme exhibition, parallel exhibition, satellite exhibition), reflecting the diversity of Beijing.
Text/Beijing Youth Daily reporter Wang Lei
Editor/Gong Lifang