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the prosperity of the museum is only the first step

after that, we will face different problems at different stages.

there is still a longer way to go

"museums allow me to temporarily step out of the context of daily life and immerse myself in a certain period of history. for example, in the xi'an forest of steles museum, looking at the epitaphs on the wall, i feel as if i have traveled through time and space and seen each and every one of them that was once concrete and vivid. maybe it is the life of a 'little man', a unique and profound cultural experience brought by the museum. "kk has been to many places, some for studying, some for work, and some just for traveling, but no matter where he goes, a visit to the local museum is a must. this habit has been maintained since college, and she has visited more than 200 museums.

kk met many interesting people during his wanderings through the museums, and sometimes they would meet up to visit a special exhibition together. but most of the time, she prefers to go to the museum alone and visit at her own pace. she will also share some of her experiences visiting the exhibition on her social accounts such as douban, douyin, and xiaohongshu. although she does not have many fans, she feels that she can do her part to promote the museum, and she is satisfied.

however, in the past two years, a subtle emotion has gradually emerged in kk's heart. she began to worry a little about the museums she cherished being known about, just like she was afraid that a treasure would be discovered, because she saw that there were more and more people in the museum, and the once rare silence was disappearing into the noise. .

tang yi and liu jun, a "post-80s" couple, also have similar emotions. in the past nearly two decades, museums have been one of the most important parts of their lives. they spend most of their holidays visiting exhibitions. after they have children, visiting museums has become a way for them to accompany and educate their children. . but living in a third-tier city like xiangyang, they often feel lonely because it is difficult to find friends with common interests: "i told my colleagues that we like museums, but my colleagues find it boring and they never go."

but liu jun recently discovered that museums have begun to appear in colleagues’ holiday itineraries, and their own travel has become difficult. many museums they want to visit are hard to find. even if they are lucky enough to get the opportunity to visit, the experience is also greatly reduced. "a place like a museum should be quiet and quaint, and should not be crowded like a market. we really want to see all our friends go, but if they are all people, the experience will definitely be bad. so my wife every time, we say, let’s go there before it becomes an internet celebrity. once it becomes an internet celebrity, we won’t be able to go,” she told china news weekly.

on april 5, at the hunan provincial museum, visitors looked at the han costumes unearthed from the mawangdui han tomb.

unprecedented heat

museums are becoming popular. this is not only an intuitive feeling of tang yi, liu jun or kk, but it is also confirmed in the data.

according to statistics from the state administration of cultural heritage, during the 2024 spring festival, museums across the country received a total of 73.5801 million visitors, a year-on-year increase of 98.6%. tickets for some popular museums have been sold out before the holiday. suzhou museum, hubei provincial museum, hunan provincial museum, etc. have also made the decision to extend their business hours. in order to meet market demand, sanxingdui museum even temporarily increased the number of tickets per ticket. number of reservations per day.

on the morning of the first day of the lunar new year, the entrances of various museums were crowded with people: more than 6,000 people lined up in the square in front of the shanxi museum, and 15,000 people entered the museum one after another. the parking lot opened half an hour after the museum opened. it was packed inside; visitors to the shandong museum lined up in a zigzag formation, extending for more than 100 meters, all the way to the nearby jingshi east road and then turning eastward... the nanjing museum opened on the second day of the lunar new year and received 25,537 visitors that day; the east building of the shanghai museum, which only started trial operation a few years ago, welcomed 90,000 visitors during the spring festival, with an average of nearly 20,000 visitors per day...

on april 30, tourists visited the "changes in time and space - shanxi ancient architecture digital art exhibition" at shanxi museum. photography/staff reporter wei liang

the popularity continues during the may day holiday. the zhejiang provincial museum received a total of 102,000 visitors during the holidays, including 24,700 visitors on the 4th alone; the sanxingdui museum received a total of 126,652 visitors, an average of more than 20,000 visitors per day; the shaanxi history museum opened reservations 7 days before the holiday ; suzhou museum’s reservations for may 1 were sold out in just 4 minutes after opening; liaoning provincial museum received nearly 18,000 visitors on the first day of the holiday, a year-on-year increase of 22%; in chongqing, 15,000 people waited at the three gorges museum in the drizzle outside the door, i listened to the announcement on the radio that the reservations were full for the day, while waiting to enter; the new yinxu museum in anyang was only opened to the public on february 26. on may 2, the number of visitors reached 22,487, a record the peak number of visitors in a single day since the museum opened;... tongcheng travel data shows that in the two days before the may day holiday, ticket bookings and reservations for key museums across the country increased by 406% year-on-year; statistics from the state administration of cultural heritage show that 6,000 people nationwide many museums and 55 national archaeological sites and parks received nearly 40 million tourists in the first three days of the holiday, reaching the highest level in the same period in history.

"the museum craze is unprecedented." wang yuehan, founder of henan yuehan cultural communication company, told china news weekly that he almost witnessed the museum's transformation from deserted to lively: "i started visiting museums in 2006 when i was in college. at that time, all museums were empty. from 2011 to 2015, i worked as a volunteer guide at the henan museum for five years. my family thought i was crazy. at that time, most of the museum volunteers were women over 40 years old, and they were college students. there are very few, and they don’t last long. but after 2017, the museum became more popular, and the henan museum was crowded even on working days. there were more people willing to volunteer. the director is my friend. he told me that now we have to brush up my resume first, then do interviews and finally get training, and it takes a long time before i can get started.”

in addition to the increase in the number of people going to museums, the museums themselves are also growing. in 2008, state-owned museums successively implemented a free opening policy, which was seen as the initial driving force to boost the popularity of museums. however, at that time, the total number of museums in the country was only 2,970. by 2018, this number had been rewritten to 5,354, nearly doubling in ten years. this scale is also among the highest in the world. before this, only four countries, russia, germany, japan, and the united states, had more than 5,000 museums.

after 2018, growth continued at an average annual rate of about 300 companies. according to the latest data released by the state administration of cultural heritage on international museum day this year, the total number of museums nationwide in 2023 has reached 6,833. at the same time, the number of museum collections, building area, number of exhibitions, etc. have also been correspondingly increased.

it was under this momentum that wang yuehan registered a company in 2019, with the main business of organizing cultural and museum tours. he had a premonition that a huge market that could be exploited was right in front of him. this is a radiation effect produced by the museum craze, and it is also another manifestation of the museum craze - a large number of peripheral industries have emerged, and many people are pouring into this rapidly accelerating track. "when the company started, the study tour market was relatively niche. then the epidemic hit and we were struggling to survive. we thought the business would get better in 2023, but we didn't expect the situation to be much worse than we imagined because there were more competitors. , including travel agencies, are transforming into this.” he even has a plan that if this field continues to be crowded, the company may consider changing its business content and turning to curation: “it will be more stable than the study tour business model.”

however, the pressure in the curatorial field is no less than that of study tours, and xiaojiang knows this firsthand. ten years ago, she graduated from the department of cultural relics and museum studies at fudan university with a master's degree. she first worked in a museum for several years and then went to an exhibition company. at the end of 2020, she decided to start a business and started a company of her own, specializing in undertaking curatorial work for museums. according to her, the domestic museum curation industry actually existed as early as the 1980s, with excellent pioneers such as guangdong jimei design engineering co., ltd. and shanghai art design co., ltd. after forty years of development, this market has become very mature, but even so, new companies are still joining in. on the one hand, the growing number of museums and exhibitions has increased the demand for services, and on the other hand, the prosperous situation also attracts people to share. dividend.

"there are more and more companies in this industry. it can be said that there are so many companies in this industry in shanghai where i am located, as well as in cities like beijing, hangzhou, and nanjing. so although the cake is very big, it does not mean that you can eat a piece of it." she told "china news weekly" said.

above: a large number of tourists in the shandong provincial museum on july 14. below: on may 17, tourists queued up at the hubei provincial museum.

museum entertainment

"it is the only way for all museums to attract more viewers' attention through some slightly popular methods." according to wang siyu, a scholar at the school of archeology and museology at peking university, the heating up of domestic museums in recent years is a this is inevitable: "from a global perspective, the development of museums actually has several different stages. at first, it focused on the collection of artifacts. later, it began to become a public intellectual institution, paying more and more attention to educational functions and public services. , and in the second half of the 20th century, the western world placed more emphasis on museums as social institutions to participate in and respond to real problems. china’s museums started relatively late and are currently still in the second stage.”

but that doesn't mean everything comes naturally. behind the rise of museums, the foundation is economic development and the improvement of cultural standards. in this regard, zhao zhiming, deputy director of shanxi museum, once made a popular explanation in an interview with china news weekly: "it used to take several months of salary to buy a bicycle. it was inconvenient to travel, and it was still a day off. how many people would there be?" do people have time to come to museums? when travel becomes more convenient, free time increases, and people’s quality improves, and various cultural needs arise, museums will naturally step down from their role as dull and serious educators and transform into cultural service providers.”

policy promotion and guidance are equally important. in 2011 and 2012, the state administration of cultural heritage successively issued the "outline of the mid- and long-term development plan for museums (2011-2020)" and the "opinions on strengthening museum display and exhibition work" to build a museum with distinctive features, optimized structure, and reasonable layout. the system has put forward specific requirements and guidance; in 2015, the state council promulgated the "museum regulations", which not only filled the gap in national regulations for the museum industry, but also clarified that "museums must not violate their non-profit attributes and do not deviate from their mission. , can carry out business activities." since then, the museum has made great strides on the track of innovative operation and diversified development, and has begun to enter the public eye with an increasingly eye-catching image.

a typical example is the frequent appearance of major museums in the media. in 2016, a documentary titled "i repair cultural relics in the forbidden city" was broadcast, using the restoration experts of the palace museum as the subjects, and detailedly and systematically demonstrated a little-known but highly skilled method of protecting cultural relics. time triggered a viewing boom. in the following years, a series of programs such as "national treasure", "new forbidden city", "if national treasures could talk", "china national treasure conference", "city of museums", "museum wonderful night", etc. were launched on major tv stations and video websites. the museum culture is conveyed in a relaxed and vivid way.

(from top to bottom) "i am repairing cultural relics in the forbidden city" "national treasure" "if national treasure could talk" posters and stills.

wang siyu feels that in terms of embracing the public, domestic museums at this stage show a hungry mentality to some extent: "in the past two years, the popularity of leisure culture has been rising, and the public is increasingly fond of some interesting things. in this regard, our museum's overall attitude is very receptive, and it actively releases many things that cater to the public, including on social media and short video platforms, and some entertainment push is also led by the museum itself. of."

"when we discuss museum education, we often mention the word "edutainment". entertainment and museums themselves are not in conflict." chang danjing, a scholar at the university of the chinese academy of social sciences, has long been concerned about the entertainment and audience participation of museums. she he told china news weekly that in fact, museums have had entertainment functions since their birth. countries and professional organizations around the world have also mentioned entertainment very early in their definitions of museums and explanations of their functions. for example, british scholar molly harrison in 1956 he pointed out that modern museums should follow the 3e principles - educate (educate the people), enter (provide entertainment), and enrich (enrich life). at present, china's museum field is in the process of shifting from "collection-oriented" to "audience-centered", and the work focus, communication strategies and service methods are bound to make corresponding adjustments: "by adding some entertainment elements, we can stimulate the curiosity of the general audience is also more adapted to their cognitive level, and then it guides them to think further and enhances the learning experience in a pleasant way.”

the museum's downward leaning has embedded the originally cold museum culture into people's daily lives. the decentralization of information in the era of self-media has further fermented this entertainment. in may 2023, the "2023 museum data report" released by douyin showed that the total duration of museum-related videos on its platform was 240,000 hours, and the total annual playback volume was as high as 51.34 billion times, which is equivalent to the number of visitors received by museums across the country in a year. 66 times; a year later, in the latest "douyin museum ecological data report", these figures have changed again: the number of videos increased by 191% year-on-year, and the cumulative playback volume increased by 62% year-on-year.

in the "2023 life trend observation report" released by xiaohongshu, the topic "conspicuous bags in museums" was selected as the annual trend with nearly 20 million reads and over 350,000 notes. among them, the meditation arhat of china ceramics museum, shaanxi the painted pottery neck-necked figurines of the history museum and the "horse stepping on flying swallows" of the gansu museum are among the "top three". what is particularly meaningful is that netizens also gave each of the three cultural relics a stage name that is both joyful and self-deprecating, calling them "speechless bodhisattva", "wronged villain" and "working horse in a hurry to get off work" respectively, which represent ancient people who have traveled through thousands of years. wisdom has suddenly become a vehicle for self-expression for contemporary youth.

chang danjing is not surprised by the various "developments" given to the museum by netizens: "the meaning (of the museum) is not directly transmitted to the audience by the museum, but comes from the audience's own interpretation. the audience actively explores the meaning through participation. , discover meaning and create meaning, and exchange meaning in museums.” she just feels that the nature and extent of entertainment should be kept cautious: “entertainment is a means rather than an end. entertainment in museums should be superficial. entertainment can lead to a deeper level of self-discovery, rather than just entertainment for the senses.”

trap

some realities are confirming chang danjing's vigilance.

in today’s bustling world, “check-in exhibition viewing” is quite common. not everyone who walks into the museum is as pious as kk, tang yi, and liu jun. there are also people who just want to take a few photos and short videos, and then post them on social platforms. create a certain life state of your own or exchange for more likes and attention.

in august 2023, the "china youth daily" published such a report: in the guangxi zhuang autonomous region museum, a nanning citizen was patted on the shoulder by a fashionably dressed girl during a visit and asked for a place for her. taking pictures with friends, citizens wanted to wait until they finished taking pictures and then enjoy them. however, after several girls took turns taking pictures, some of them felt dissatisfied and changed their positions so that their companions could continue taking pictures. one of them even brought several sets of clothes and kept changing her looks. in interviews with reporters, many viewers said they had had similar experiences, and some even ignored the "do not touch" prompts and destroyed exhibits for the sake of taking photos.

during the study tour, wang yuehan also discovered that many customers who signed up were not very interested in cultural and museum projects. in contrast, they preferred projects that were more interesting, more sensory stimulating, or easier to engage in. a place where you have an emotional resonance. "for example, grottoes, murals, and painted sculptures are the most intuitive, and you can appreciate the beauty without any knowledge background. the same goes for museums, which are more popular because of their exquisite artifacts."

if the various real situations shown at the audience level are understandable, after all, the rapid expansion of the group will inevitably lead to mixed results, then the museum itself has excessively slipped into the internet celebrity in the process of lightweighting and becoming more people-friendly, which is a deeper trap. kk told "china news weekly" that among some of the museums she visited, although some were very popular, they only created "check-in attractions". the exhibition content lacked depth and failed to reflect the cultural connotation and academic value of the museum: " overly pursuing commercialization and ignoring the original intention of cultural communication may increase popularity and visits in the short term, but in the long run, there is a risk of losing all the benefits.”

similar situations have occurred in western museums. in the 1970s, after some museums in the united kingdom and the united states experienced the plight of the economic recession, in order to survive and develop, they began to rely on marketing and marketization, and even adopted a disney-style exhibition setting, making extensive use of sound, light and electricity constantly create strange landscapes. however, since the 1990s, this development trend has been regarded as a detour by academic circles, and criticism and reflection have begun.

"today's western academic circles no longer focus on the so-called museum marketing, but more on how to face social justice, how to build community identity, etc. the current focus of chinese museums still revolves around the audience, or rather using the audience as a clue to connect the main business activities of the museum is, of course, a must for china, but when the audience comes, are we still satisfied with this status quo?" in wang siyu's view? , the mission of the museum is to lead mankind forward, so it should be guiding both aesthetically and intellectually. he remembered that he had seen such an exhibition at the hangzhou arts and crafts museum: the exhibition was called "how far is forever" and displayed many cultural relics unearthed from tombs. from the perspective of the exhibits, this is not unusual, but this kind of exhibition is usually only intended to explain the historical information of a distant era. that exhibition is different. it takes the view of life and death as the theme, and uses the ancients' different possibilities for treating life and death. for logic, organize the structure of all displays. at the same time, in order to highlight these views of life and death, many contemporary artworks have also been introduced into the exhibition and displayed alongside the antiquities.

wang siyu feels that although domestic museums have received more and more attention in recent years, there have been fewer innovative exhibitions like this. "this is just like if the audience likes soap operas, the tv station will keep making soap operas. what the audience likes may not necessarily be avant-garde and experimental exhibitions. they may like to see national treasures. when the audience increases, the museum will be more willing to launch some regular exhibitions," he told china news weekly.

"of course we must consider the needs and interests of the public, but we cannot do it entirely around this." on this issue, chang danjing and wang siyu have the same view, "if the purpose of the museum is to cater to the audience, attracting the audience and making yourself look lively can easily deviate from the purpose of the museum.”

challenges of private museums

regarding the current museum craze, wang siyu has always maintained a cautious attitude: "sometimes, prosperity does not mean diversity." if we focus on some more details, this sentence may be more conservative - -prosperity does not mean co-prosperity.

the "china museum hot search list" guided by the china cultural relics exchange center has long-termly evaluated domestic museums based on 20 indexes including permanent exhibition index, visitation index, cultural creativity index, baidu index, weibo index, short video index, etc. popularity ranking. in these lists, all the front row seats are occupied by large state-owned museums, and it is difficult to find traces of private museums.

this is a reality that is easily overlooked in the museum craze: the substantially increased audience does not flow evenly to various types of museums, and venues with abundant resources and strong capabilities still attract attention. even as they grew taller and taller, the shadows hanging over the heads of those originally weak venues did not dissipate.

tianjin financial museum is a private museum opened in 2010. it has been continuously rated as a 4a-level social organization in tianjin by the civil affairs bureau. it has received nearly 700,000 visitors from all walks of life, and has launched more than 600 lectures, forums, special exhibitions and other activities. field. however, starting in december 2023, the museum ceased operations and closed permanently. it was not until february 19 this year that a farewell letter was released on its official public account. the letter explained the reason for the suspension of the museum as construction safety hazards and having suffered losses for a long time, curator shao ying once again gave a detailed explanation of the embarrassment they faced when facing china news weekly.

above: tianjin financial museum. picture/the following picture provided by the interviewee: shanghai hudec memorial hall. picture/china-singapore

located on a local old street with a century-old financial history, the tianjin financial museum is housed in a french club built in 1931. as early as during the preparations for the opening of the museum, a chandelier fell down in this small building due to its age and disrepair. after a long period of use, the safety risk further intensified. because it is a cultural protection unit, if it is repaired, the operation will be very troublesome and the funds will be very high. "in the past ten years, our operations have been losing money. coupled with the impact of the epidemic, it is indeed very difficult." shao ying said that the museum has been free to visit since its opening, and its operating costs depend entirely on cultural and creative products and cafes. the income from the curatorial services provided by the company and the company could barely support it. it was not until last year that in order to relieve the pressure, it began to sell tickets. the ticket price was only 5 yuan, which was better than nothing.

shao ying made a rough calculation and found that the average annual operating cost of the museum was about 1.2 million. over the past ten years, their total investment would have been tens of millions. fortunately, there was a competition a few years ago, and the financial museum consistently ranked in the top ten every year, receiving a subsidy of 400,000 from the government each time. "this money is of great help to us. every year we have to do a large-scale temporary exhibition. the cost of setting up and dismantling the exhibition is very high. this 400,000 yuan is very critical. but from 2019 to now, this evaluation has not ”

struggling to survive is not a unique dilemma for tianjin financial museum, but a common challenge for private museums. after working in the industry for many years, shao ying often communicates with her peers, and most of the things she hears are similar to them. and just half a month before they announced the suspension of operations, a private museum in shanghai, the hudec memorial hall, also closed its door to welcome tourists. although nearly half a year has passed, liu suhua, director of the hudec memorial hall, still choked up and lamented from time to time when interviewed by china news weekly: "in the past few years, i have used money from my other businesses to support the memorial hall. i am already 60 years old. , i couldn’t do it anymore, and the company’s profits could no longer help me support such a venue. in the last few days (before closing), it rained heavily every day, and many citizens lined up for several kilometers in the rain to say goodbye, which gave me a lot. move."

among this camp, guanfu museum is considered the most famous. on the "zhongbo hot search list", it ranks first in the private category all year round. however, even so, its founder ma weidu still said: "the museum craze has brought little dividends to private museums. we are definitely in a weak and natural growth state."

guanfu museum beijing branch. picture/provided by interviewee

as china’s first private museum, guanfu’s growth has not been smooth sailing. "the first time i made a formal application was in 1992. at that time, various conditions were not allowed, so it was not approved. four years later, many changes have taken place in society, and the beijing municipal cultural relics bureau put our matter on the agenda. "on october 30, 1996, we obtained legal person status." ma weidu said that people at that time did not understand the matter of opening a museum, and there was no need to visit the museum. although there were no visitors after the opening, however, there were very few visitors. “the first ten years were still very difficult.”

but ma weidu has a philosophy. he believes that in today's information age, "knowledge" is the most valuable thing. therefore, he always has two basic plans for the museum: first, focus on branding and media promotion to make the museum deeply rooted in the hearts of the people; it is to adapt to changes in society. so the turning point came in 2008. that year, he appeared on cctv's "hundred schools of lectures". in 52 lectures, he gave knowledgeable and humorous lectures on five categories of collection: furniture, ceramics, jade, lacquerware, and miscellaneous items. culture. that was the most glorious period of "hundred schools of forum". through this method, ma weidu not only gained huge personal influence, but also raised the popularity of guanfu museum in one fell swoop.

therefore, to a large extent, guanfu’s development path is inseparable from the business card of “ma weidu”. he did not deny this, and said frankly that it is for this reason that guanfu's success is difficult to copy: "its difficulty is reflected in at least two aspects. the first aspect is the times. the growth curve is consistent with the country's growth curve, which is difficult to replicate; the second aspect is my personal situation. i was originally a literary editor. it is not difficult for me to write and talk about this matter, and i am willing to actively do it. that’s not something everyone can do.”

"i always say that i am like a crooked-necked pine growing on the cliffs of huangshan mountain. it cannot grow or die. it has special conditions to survive in the cracks. if you really plant in the cracks, you will plant whatever you want. it’s not viable. i think it’s really a difficult problem for private museums to achieve scale and efficiency today,” he told china news weekly.

(kk, tang yi, liu jun and xiaojiang in the article are all pseudonyms)