Congested history
A multitude of old and ultra-modern museums in present-day China
MúzeumCafé 28.
The arts are flourishing and the Chinese are also highly regarded in the fields of science and technology. The turning points in China’s 20th-century history affected museums and the 3,500 museums functioning today all represent an imprint of the period when they were established. In the past three decades museology has become an independent profession. Political, business and professional interests assert themselves in different forms and to different degrees in each institution and, like everything in China, museums are experiencing incredibly fast changes. In China the collection of art objects reaches back more than 2000 years, though the imperial and private collections were not open to the public. The first two museums in China were founded by foreigners in Shanghai in the 1860s and 1870s. The Chinese themselves regard the Nantong Museum established in Jiangsu province in 1905 as the first real Chinese museum. Education was the main aim of the Nantong and other early Chinese museums. The Nantong Museum, which represented an attempt by the elite of a remote region to take over the duties of a collapsed state, was forgotten for a long time and was rediscovered only in the late 1970s, since when it has been celebrated as the first Chinese museum. The vibrant intellectual life of the 1910s and 1920s resulted in several new institutes and by 1937 China had about 200 museums. The first national museum, the National History Museum was founded in Beijing in 1926. The Association of Chinese Museums was set up to co-ordinate the professional work and establish Chinese museology in 1935. The opening of the Beijing imperial palace, the Forbidden City, on 10 October 1925 was the main event of the time from the aspect of museology. The 1937-45 war with Japan and the subsequent 1946-49 civil war had disastrous effects on museums. Buildings were damaged or destroyed and the collections also suffered severely. Restoration commenced only after the Chinese Communist Party assumed power in 1949. Mao Zedong’s speeches in 1942 provided the keynote for the People’s Republic of China’s cultural policy. He asserted that culture was to serve the party’s guidelines and cultural monuments could be used if they helped meeting the goals of the present. Chinese communists also believed in the omnipotence of science, and regarded spreading the scientific world view as a means of struggle against old forces. The new or restored natural and technical science museums played a very important role in that with their flagship the Beijing Natural History Museum, founded in 1951. Modern art museums were also established during the period with the Chinese National Gallery being the most significant. At the time two new types of museum institute appeared – the regional state museum and the revolutionary memorial site. The first large regional museum was the Museum of Shandong Province, founded in 1954. By the early 1960s an extensive museum system had been established. Museums were under direct Party control and primarily relayed propaganda to the public. This network was destroyed during the early months of the Cultural Revolution (1966–76). For a few years no museums functioned in China; their employees were slandered and settled in the countryside. Some museums reopened in the second half of the Cultural Revolution, but their exhibitions were rearranged in line with the extreme ideas of the time. The real revival of Chinese museums began only after the announcement of “reform and opening” in 1978. Since then they have developed at a rapid pace and today China has one of the world’s most extensive museum networks. The Federation of Chinese Museums was founded in 1982 and it joined ICOM a year later. Museum development really accelerated in the 1990s. By then a middle class existed with the demand and the money for culture. Museums began to be operated with some elements of a business approach, which had previously been absent. In addition, the state acknowledged culture as an element of ‘all-national power’. At the end of last year 3415 museums were registered in China with Beijing having the most museums among the world’s cities after London. Transformation of the public has driven real change – major exhibitions have become media events and visiting certain exhibitions has become fashionable. The old Socialist Realist museum buildings have been replaced by ultra-modern edifices, often designed by celebrated international or Chinese architects. With regard to funding bodies, the majority of museums are state-owned and belong to different levels of the administration. The entire picture is continuously changing. Within months large new cities appear from nowhere with carefully planned infrastructure, and centuries-old buildings disappear at the same speed as a result of investment and property development projects. The trends are basically encouraging – ideological control is slackening, the general professional standards are clearly increasing and Chinese museums are hyper-active in terms of international co-operation. It’s worth keeping an eye on them.