Museum of Finance: A window into the era that showcases financial culture

"Finance is our friend, it makes us feel personal security, financial freedom, and experience happiness, through the discovery of history, we can locate the present, and participate in the future, this is the mission of the Financial Museum, together with all sectors of society, and in the form of strategic alliances, to jointly promote the enlightenment of finance, financial inclusion and financial innovation and development, and work together to consolidate the core competitiveness of the financial industry." On the eve of International Museum Day 2024, Wang Wei, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Financial Museum, and Ms. Yu Tong, Director of the Financial Museum, were interviewed by the Financial Times, expressing the sense of historical mission of the Financial Museum.

Turning the clock back to June 9, 2010, the Tianjin Finance Museum, which for the first time adopted a variety of exhibition methods such as sound, light, electricity, shadow and objects, outlined the evolution trajectory of the local financial history from important figures, milestones to core concepts from the diversified perspective of "tradition + modernity", and created the financial and cultural landmark of Tianjin, the city where it is located, becoming the first museum in the history of mainland China to mark the keyword "finance".

Since then, financial and cultural landmarks such as Suzhou Foundation Museum (2011), Jinggangshan Revolutionary Finance Museum (2018), Shanghai Science and Technology Finance Museum (2019), Tianfu Sichuan Financial Museum (Chengdu, 2019), and Zhongyuan Financial Museum (Zhengzhou, 2019) have sprung up one by one. During this period, the Museum of Finance also participated in the establishment of the Hong Kong Museum of Finance (2018). The Museum of International Finance (Beijing, 2012), the Museum of Internet Finance (Beijing, 2015), the Museum of M&A (Shanghai, 2016), the Northeast Museum of Finance (Shenyang, 2016), the Ningbo Insurance Museum (2019), and the Chongqing Museum of Finance (2021) have been switched to online operations.

The financial industry has a rich display window across the country, with the division of functions of the past and the present, open to the public free of charge, and has successively launched dozens of special exhibitions such as "Centennial Revolution, Red Finance", "Cracking Down on Illegal Fundraising and Financial Fraud", "Sino-British Financial History", "100 Years of the Federal Reserve", "Social Fundraising and Financial Security", "My Residence, My Finance", "Women and Finance", "Science and Technology Finance Exhibition", etc., and toured across the country.

A sense of historical mission to learn from the past and the present

"The English of the museum is Museum, the root is evolved from Greek to Latin, Muse is the general name of the muse in charge of literature and art and science and technology in ancient Greek mythology, Um means 'location', the temple of the muse is the early source of the museum, the victors of the war in history, like to collect and display valuable trophies, objectively provide the world with a sample for research and learning, until the revival of European humanism, reason, science and art have become social fashion, These institutions, which specialize in displaying imperial collections and private plays, are collectively classified as museums. Wang Wei said that in the past 100 years, museums have developed into an industry specializing in collecting, connoisseurship, and education, and governments of various governments, a large number of commercial institutions and individual collectors have invested in it, making it a rich and ever-changing field. This year, the International Council of Museums (ICOM) released the theme of International Museum Day 2024: Museums, Education, and Research, which also shows that the term museum has long developed from an externalized exhibition place to a cross-category discipline and interdisciplinary industry that brings together professional, systematic, comprehensive and scientific research.

According to UNESCO, there are nearly 104,000 museums in the world, 61% of which are located in Western Europe and North America, 18% in the Asia-Pacific region, 11% in Eastern Europe, 8% in Latin America and the Caribbean, only 0.8% in Africa and 0.7% in Arab countries. According to the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, in 2023, the total number of museums in the country will be nearly 7,000, ranking behind more than 30,000 in the United States and roughly the same as Japan and Germany. Obviously, China has become a world-class museum country, carrying the historical mission of excavating history, inheriting culture, and enlightening education.

"Since the beginning of this year, there have been several important changes in the Chinese museum industry." Wang Wei said that the first is to further strengthen supervision, all museums are registered in the Ministry of Civil Affairs, and operate under the supervision of their respective relevant professional authorities, so as to ensure the effective monitoring of the museum's public welfare nature and display content; Secondly, the rapid development of the Internet and digital ecology has greatly improved the museum's online operation capacity and offline digital space configuration capacity. Third, traditional museums dominated by collection functions have begun to improve their derivative services such as education and training, tourism, etc., and a large number of innovative theme museums dominated by training and education functions are entering the mainstream market. Fourth, the level of cooperation and exchange between Chinese museums and their global counterparts is greatly improved, forming professional values with global consensus.

When finance grows from an instrument to a discipline

As an important part of the exhibition business, which did not start early but is more professional, in Wang Wei's view, the exhibition experience and prospect planning of the financial industry museum have a unique mental journey.

"The financial industry has a long history, but under the mainstream concept, finance has long been regarded as a tool, and it is rarely classified as cultural objects and preserved. Wang Wei said that in the past ten years, 13 public welfare financial museums have been established in 10 cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Suzhou, Chongqing and Hong Kong, including different themes such as funds, mergers and acquisitions, insurance, international finance, science and technology finance and local finance, which not only received nearly 8 million on-site guests, but also attracted tens of millions of online interactions, driving many cities to compete to create local financial museums and become cultural landmarks of the city's financial ecology, in order to explore financial history, popularize financial knowledge, Improving people's financial literacy is the work positioning, and promoting the healthy development of local social and financial ecology.

"The mainland is moving from a financial power to a financial power, and the creation and enrichment of financial culture is an indispensable and important premise." Wang Wei told reporters that by combing through thousands of years of China's financial history, from the excavation of the first banknote, China's silver standard, the abolition of the two yuan, the birth of red finance, to the process of China's financial internationalization after the reform and opening up, finance as the country's core competitiveness, China's financial evolution history is an important source and driving force for the development of China's mainstream civilization. How to develop the financial museum into an important national museum format and work together with peers to build it into a cultural standard for economically developed cities is a positive attempt by the current financial industry to rely on government support, attract private resources, and create collectible and even conceptual museums, including the successful transformation to the future digital museum.

"According to the existing experience, the financial museum is shifting from focusing on collections and historical value to focusing on concepts, events, people and practical significance, gradually jumping out of a single collection, and promoting public enlightenment and reality improvement, which is the transformation from museum 1.0 to museum 2.0." Yutong believes that in the current era of the Internet and AI, the correct concept of organizing exhibitions is undoubtedly to take the audience as the center, take the museum scene as the background and open space for the audience to think, and seamlessly connect and extend the physical museum and the digital museum.

Who is changing the museum landscape

Regularly entering the museum has become the living habit of the generation after the reform and opening up, and has imperceptibly shaped the temperament of the times of national self-confidence, self-esteem and self-improvement. In recent years, a large number of millennials or "Generation Z" have been integrating into museums with high enthusiasm, and from time to time frequent interactions through self-media social platforms, many museums have become online celebrity check-in places, which has further promoted the innovation and iteration of museum content and exhibition methods.

"The new generation of visitors, who have grown up with the Internet age, have a strong spirit of autonomy and the ability to choose, and hope to participate in discoveries, participate in interactions, and seek like-mindedness in museums." For example, whether the theme of the exhibition is in line with the forefront of the times, whether the content of the exhibition is interactive and different, whether the docents and managers have a high degree of knowledge and learning ability, whether the exhibition content is socially and ecologically extensible, and what is the level of adoption of Internet, digital and artificial intelligence facilities?

"Motivating the audience to form various future expectations, and rehearsals can change the conditions of the future and help realize expectations, which will be the transition from Museum 2.0 to Museum 3.0." Yutong firmly believes that the architecture of Web3 and the deep participation of artificial intelligence will be the core foundation of Museum 3.0. "It must be recognized that the change in museum design and function from collection, concept to experience is precisely catering to the latest development trends of the Internet, big data and artificial intelligence, but more importantly, the new generation is becoming the mainstream of society, which is also the mainstream of museum audiences, this generation is the information society and the Internet society' The native generation', good at self-learning, good at establishing independent thinking coordinates, more focused on the future, more actively involved in innovation, able to devote themselves to the digital society and the intelligent era, if you don't understand this, the financial museum will lose the space for future growth, therefore, consolidate the museum 2.0, for the museum 3.0, this is our unswerving strategy. The fisherman said.

Source: Financial Times client

Reporter: Fang Hua

Editor: Yu Siqing

Email: [email protected]