On May 18, International Museum Day, French thinker Tocqueville said: "When the past no longer illuminates the future, people's hearts will wander in the darkness." "As a preserver and recorder of history, museums are regarded by many as the soul of a city." Not only is it loaded with the story of human civilization, its existence is a story in itself. ”
If you go to the National Museum of China,
Houmu Penta Bronze Fangding is probably one of the must-see exhibits;
If you go to Hubei Provincial Museum,
I didn't see The Chimes of Marquis Zeng, I think it would be very regrettable;
If you go to the Louvre in France,
Didn't get a glimpse of Mona Lisa's smile,
Most of them are unwilling...
These unmissable "must-sees",
Many times, it is the "treasure of the town hall" of this museum,
The treasure of the town hall of that one museum,
How did you "debut" from the huge collection?
How was the "Treasure of the Town Hall" selected for the museum? 》
(Excerpt) Author / Chen Lusheng
Many museums around the world have one or two collections known as the treasures of the town hall, which are a must-see exhibit for people to visit the museum. The collection has become the "treasure of the town hall", and the most important thing is the public recognition of it.
"Mona Lisa" by Leonardo da Vinci in france, "Night Watch" by Rembrandt of the National Museum of the Netherlands, "The Girl with The Pearl Earring" by Vermeer at the Royal Art Museum in The Hague, Germany, "The Head of the Queen of Egypt Nefertiti" in the New Museum in Berlin, Germany, the world's largest Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton in the Field Museum in Chicago, the largest crocodile specimen in the Philippine Museum of Natural History that won the Guinness Book of World Records, the stepmother Peng Fangding of the Shang Dynasty in the National Museum of China, the bronze chime of the Warring States Zeng Hou Yi in the Hubei Provincial Museum, The Han Dynasty Mawangdui T-shaped paintings of the Hunan Provincial Museum are recognized as the treasures of the town museum.
Zeng Houyi bronze chimes Photo from/Hubei Provincial Museum
There are also the world's largest museum institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the United States, and the British Museum, the world's earliest public museum to open to the public, although the collection is huge, many of them have important historical and artistic value, but it is impossible to say which collection represents the treasure of the museum. Therefore, the treasure of the town hall is only a folk saying, and it is difficult to determine a unified standard.
It is quite difficult to find a treasure of a town hall from a museum's collection of hundreds of thousands or millions. The first difficulty is to form a consensus, and the second is whether it can be "calmed down". Forming a consensus is the most difficult, and holding on to and not holding back is only relative.
Vermeer's painting "The Girl with the Pearl Earrings"
The so-called "treasure of the town hall" must have uniqueness, uniqueness, scarcity, importance, irreplaceability, and must be able to express its unique historical and artistic value, such as the largest, the smallest; the highest, the shortest; the longest, the shortest; the heaviest, the lightest; and so on.
Uniqueness is one of the criteria for easier identification of the treasures of the town museum, such as the largest dinosaur in the natural history museum, the largest crocodile, etc., which are difficult to reach in the same collection or other museums. Uniqueness is the basic requirement of the treasure of the town hall, scarcity is often expressed in the material, and the importance is often related to the academic nature of history and art. Irreplaceability is important evidence of history or the importance of artistic achievement.
Zhang Zeduan's "Qingming River Map" (Partial) Click on the picture to learn more
The art museum has a splendid collection of works by painters of past generations, and it must be the most prominent that it can become the treasure of the town museum. For example, Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, although it does not have the huge size of "The Last Supper", nor does it have a strict and complex internal structure and classic subject matter, but without "Mona Lisa", da Vinci would have been eclipsed, and the Louvre would no longer be glorious. The mysterious smile of "Mona Lisa" alone has been studied and explained by countless experts, as well as the life of Mona Lisa and the da Vinci code, which are not available in da Vinci's other works.
Leonardo da Vinci's painting Mona Lisa
The treasure of the Dutch National Museum is Rembrandt's Night Watch, painted in 1642 at the age of 36, the most special and important of the more than 500 works rembrandt painted in his lifetime. The painting is a stage play depicting group portraits of the members of the Amsterdam City Shooters' Company, each of whom paid for Rembrandt's creation. However, after completion, the shooters were not satisfied, because everyone was different in size, position, light and shade in the picture.
As a result, they launched the citizens to attack Rembrandt by any means, causing a stir throughout Amsterdam, and the final honorarium was reduced from 5250 guilders to 1600 guilders, the most serious of which was that few people came to Rembrandt to paint a collective portrait, and the dealers also alienated Rembrandt, causing the great Dutch painter to die of poverty at the age of 63. The painting remained in the collection of the Dutch royal family until it became the collection of the Dutch National Museum after its establishment in the 19th century.
Rembrandt's painting Night Watch
The Stepmother peng fangding of the National Museum of China became the king of Chinese bronzes with a weight of 832.84 kilograms. It was excavated in March 1939 in the village of Wuguan in Anyang, Henan, and was re-buried in the ground to prevent Fang Ding from falling into the hands of the Japanese army that invaded China at that time. In June 1946, a senator Chen from the Anyang government at the time persuaded the collector to hand over Fang Ding to the government, re-excavated it, and transported it to Nanjing, where it was first exhibited in 1948.
In 1949, Fang Ding planned to ship to Taiwan and arrived in Shanghai first, but could not get on the plane because the width of the aircraft door was not enough, and returned to Nanjing to hide in the Nanjing Museum. In 1959, it was transferred from Nanjing to Beijing and became the treasure of the Museum of Chinese History (i.e. the National Museum of China).
Post-mother penta fangding
It can be seen that around the treasure of the town hall, there are usually some stories and transmission processes that people talk about, which are also important objects of academic research themselves, and the new discoveries of the research have enriched the content of the treasure of the town hall.
The treasures of the museum are basically fixed in a certain position and cannot be moved, and there are corresponding national laws that stipulate that they cannot go abroad or leave the museum. For example, Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" in the Uffizi Museum in Italy, and Repin's "The Porter on the Volga River" in the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, are all nailed to the wall, and whenever you look at it, you are there.
Repin's painting "The Porter on the Volga"
In China, many of the treasures of the town museum are in the "Catalogue of Cultural Relics Prohibited from Going Abroad (Border) Exhibition" published by the state, which is not only restricted from leaving the country, but also leaving the museum to which they belong. They are quietly displayed in the main exhibition hall of the museum, from the planning of the exhibition space, the design of the exhibition method, the arrangement of the display cabinets, etc., they all show special respect.
The treasures of museums are the pride of this country or museums, they are not produced through online auditions or discussions and consultations, there is no museum publicity, they are often the conventions of society. They are gradually produced in the process of the history of the development of the museum, in the development of people's understanding of history and art. Therefore, this focus on the historical process is indispensable to the treasure of the town hall.
Wen Zi/The Beauty of Museums, Guangxi Normal University Press
The original title is "The Treasure of the Museum"" The selected article has been deleted
Chen Danyan once said: "Whenever I walk towards the museum, a voice will ring in my heart, saying the same sentence: This is another room where I used to live. ”
The museum condenses time and space, spans the ancient and modern, links history, and creates a different kind of romance. Austrian photographer Stefan Draschan recorded this romance in a special way, he used the lens to capture those "people and works collide" moments in the museum, or collide with shirts, or collide with hair color and hairstyles, or collide posture and demeanor... The viewer is subtly matched and connected to the artwork they are staring at, as if possessing some kind of resonance of the soul.
Images are from Austrian photographer Stefan Draschan
Why go to the museum?
Because the moment you walk into the museum,
The moment you come face to face with each exhibit,
It opened a romantic covenant with time and space.
You are led by the most shining souls in the history of human civilization,
You are surrounded by the best works in the history of human art,
Detached from the present,
To be able to blend into another distant world that has passed,
In this way, a certain eternity beyond reality is reached.
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