Exhibitions and Events-News- CAFA Art Museum

Exhibitions and Events－News

Focusing on important exhibition and activity info of CAFA Art Museum, and updates the latest news of international museum industry.

: NYC Chinatown Fire Threatens Museum Artifacts: Highlighting Need for Digital Backup

2020-01-27

The Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) in New York City Chinatown said last Friday that a fire has likely destroyed all of its priceless 85,000-piece collection that tell the story of Chinese migration to the United States.
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: Museums Throw Open the Storage Rooms and Let in the Public

2020-01-14

As museum collections have grown increasingly vast in the last decades, institutions worldwide are seeking to balance two primary missions: protecting and preserving collections, and sharing as much as possible with the public.
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: Deepfakes in Art and Museums

2020-01-03

In the realm of arts and culture, deepfakes are being used to produce art, engage audiences and provide personalized experiences to visitors in a way that has never been done before.
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: V&A Launches Culture in Crisis Database

2019-12-27

The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London has created a new global platform that aims to become “the world’s largest and most accessible database of cultural heritage preservation projects”.The database, Culture in Crisis Portal (https://cultureincrisis.org/), is designed for individuals and organizations working to preserve cultural heritage at stake from conflict, criminal acts or natural disasters. It encourages users to share their projects, and aims to bring together people who work on similar projects, potential sponsors, collaborators and experts working in the field, as well as raise people’s awareness of the importance of cultural protection.The free database is the latest step in the museum’s ongoing commitment in protecting the world’s cultural heritage and supporting communities that suffer cultural loss. Founded in 2014, the V&A’s Culture in Crisis programme has been sharing information and knowledge on cultural protection, holding conferences, summits, talks and events on relevant issues, and supporting action across the world.“From the beginning of the programme, Culture in Crisis has been about bringing people together, networking people, and benefitting from the opportunities we can each provide to each other. The portal is a natural progression on that,” said Vernon Rapley, director of cultural heritage protection and security at the V&A.Source | Museums AssociationAuthor | Yosola OlorunsholaEditor | Yufan Lu
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: This Amsterdam Museum Seeks to Preserve Street Art Using VR

2019-12-18

While VR technology is increasingly applied in art making and exhibitions, amplifying and transforming the audience’s visual experience, a proposal by an Amsterdam museum offers a new possibility of the technology in the art industry.Recently, the Street Art Museum Amsterdam (SAMA) proposes to use VR as a method to preserve one of its street artwork collection. Named “Fatherhood”, the work is a monumental mural made in 2015 by Colombian artist Stinkfish. It is located in the heart of a residential community in Amsterdam Nieuw-West, and will soon be demolished due to renovations in the neighborhood.As a contemporary eco-museum which has built a collection of around 300 street artworks, SAMA commissioned its works not within four walls but on the street for everyone to see and enjoy. “Fatherhood” is not the first of its collection that faces demolishing. On its Kickstarter page (though the fundraising has already ended in failure), the museum stated that around 70% of its artworks have been removed, demolished or painted over.By using VR technology, SAMA hopes to not only preserve the work, but also let the audience experience the work in ways that would be impossible even in reality. “It is incredible to see how progress in XR technologies is enabling grassroots initiatives to affordably reach the goal such as the first-ever street art VR catalogue online to promote marginalized neighborhoods, whilst continually using street art as a tool to dialogue for inspirational and emancipatory goals.” commented Dr. Gabriele Romagnoli, XR coach and official advisor for the San Francisco AR/VR Association.Source | VR focusAuthor | Peter GrahamEditor | Lu Yufan
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: The Tide of Change: Manchester Museum Becomes First in UK to Repatriate Objects

2019-12-12

As more and more museums in Europe and the US begin to return objects looted from indigenous peoples during colonial period, the Manchester Museum in England became the first one to do so in the United Kingdom.The museum has repatriated a group of 43 objects considered sacred to four indigenous groups in Australia: the Aranda people of Central Australia, the Gangalidda Garawa people of northwest Queensland, the Nyamal people of the Pilbara, and the Yawuru people of the Broome, both in Western Australia.Many of these objects were held in Manchester since the 1920s, and were not on display for decades. The return was made in partnership with AIATSIS (Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Studies), which aims to build a world in which aboriginal cultures are recognized, respected and valued.Several handovers of the objects will be held from November to February 2020. In an open letter following the first handover event, Esme Ward, Director of Manchester Museum, reflected on the current repatriation mechanisms, and highlighted the importance and urgency of a more open, transparent and unconditional repatriation:“Debates about repatriation usually focus on what is lost, not what is gained,” Ward wrote, “…If museums are to reflect the complexity of the human condition and of people’s understanding of the world and each other, we must find space for the spiritual and emotional. Yet, the repatriation debate takes place on the grounds staked out by western rationalism and is framed solely in terms of ownership.”She believes that what is repatriated along with the objects invisibly to the source community is dignity, respect and autonomy, and repatriation and its associated work “could and should create a context that helps define our sense of global connectedness and even contendedness - when it is needed more than ever.” And this not only benefits the source community, but also the museums, which can be spaces for identity-forming and truth-telling. As Ward wrote: “I believe repatriation shifts the processes, language and thinking of the past towards a context of possibility and action for the future. Our museums can become places of genuine exchange and learning, reconciliation, social justice and community wellbeing.”Source | Manchester Museum, The ARTnewsAuthor | Esme Ward, Maximiliano DuronEditor | Lu Yufan
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: The Nefertiti Bust Meets the 21st Century

2019-12-06

The Nefertiti bust, created in 1345 B.C., is the most famous work in the collection of Berlin’s Neues Museum. The museum has long banned its visitors from taking any kinds of photographs of the bust, but recently, artist and 3D scanning expert Cosmo Wenman announced that the museum has sent him a flash drive containing full-color scans of the famous artifact, and published these scans online for free download.It took Wenman three years of legal battle to achieve the access of the data. In 2016, a digital replica of the bust was published to the world. While the Neues claimed that it was made by two artists who smuggled an entire 3D scanning rig under trenchcoat into the museum, the art world didn’t really buy the story, as the digital scan was simply of too high a quality. A leak rather than heist, they believed. Wenman further submitted a request citing German freedom of information laws that apply to state-funded institutions including the Neues. Although the museum first offered him the chance to view the scans under supervision, but they eventually collapsed and gave Wenman the high-resolutions, full-color scans.“It’s very difficult to find anyone who is able to actually articulate a coherent reason for keeping this kind of data away from the public,” Wenman tells artnet News. “I believe their policy is informed by fear of loss of control, fear of the unknown, and, worse, a lack of imagination.”However, the scans are not the perfect replica of the bust - the Neues etched a digital copyright license into the bottom of the bust, claiming the authority to restrict how people might use the file. It used a Creative Commons Attribution, NonCommercial, Share-Alike license, requiring people to give the museum attribution, not use it for commercial purposes and allow other people to make use of your version. Failure to comply with these requirements would mean infringement on the museum’s copyright - a copyright in the scan of a 3,000-year-old sculpture created 3,000 miles away.According to Michael Weinberg, executive director of the NYU School of Law’s Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy, although EU copyright law does not make clear about the status of 3D scans of public domain works, it clarifies that digital versions of public domain works cannot be protected by copyright. The Neues’ etching is practically meaningless, but even though Weinberg is afraid that the message could discourage those who would use the 3D scans in classroom and art creation, and prevent people from holding the piece in a virtual reality world.What’s more, such restrictions are against the entire mission of museums, which should maintain and share cultural heritage to make sure people have access to our collective history. The incident also triggers debate on how museums should handle digital artifacts - while many museums create three-dimensional scans of their artifacts, only some have made the scans available to the public.Source | Slate, SmithsonianAuthor | Michael Weinberg, Theresa MachemerEditor | Lu Yufan
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: First Chinese Iconographic Archive Is Launched

2019-11-26

The first iconography thesaurus targeted at Chinese art was recently launched by the Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum. The Chinese Iconography Thesaurus (https://chineseiconography.org) program is led by Zhang Hongxing V&A senior curator in Chinese painting and graphic art, and was established in 2016 under support from the UK Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS). According to Zhang Hongxing via The Art Newspaper China, although iconography can be dated back to a century ago in western art research, it is still underdeveloped in China, where current museum collection catalogues only allows searching by work title, author, time and material.Although the western iconography thesaurus is quite established, it is based on categorization of western art, while some ancient Chinese phrases (for example, “cat”’s alias was “li nu (狸奴)” in ancient China) and unique Chinese cultural concepts, like some concepts from Chinese Buddhism and Daoism, don’t apply to the western system. This also sets the stage for a separate iconography system for Chinese art.The CIT is based on the Iconclass system. Now it’s still a demo, only including 2,688 works of art collected by the V&A Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Palace Museum, and seven categories of over 10,000 keywords in total.“These keywords are not imagined by us out of no where. They are built upon collections, especially records of these collections.” Zhang Hongxing said. His team drew information from ancient records of objects, painting and calligraphy, especially the Shi Qu Library of Treasured Works and Midian Library of Palace Treasures of the Qianlong Emperor’s reign in Qing dynasty, referred to the experience of the Chinese libraries in the early 20th century on transferring ancient books into modern knowledge classification, and extracted keywords manually, as computer-generated keywords still contain many errors.In the future, the CIT program plans to expand its keywords to 30,000 to 40,000, and obtains the access of more museums and libraries’ collection images. Zhang Hongxing hopes the program can become an online library, categorization tool and image gallery for researchers, curators and art buffs.Source | The Art Newspaper ChinaAuthor | Chen LuEdited and translated by Lu Yufan
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: Art Engagement and College Curriculum: Strategies for Collection-based Teaching

2019-11-22

Liliana Milkova is a curator of academic programs at the Allen Memorial Art Museum (AMAM) of the arts institution Oberlin College in Ohio, USA. The museum houses an encyclopedic collection of over 15,000 objects and has served the academic community across disciplines and programs since its opening in 1917. For years, Milkova and her colleagues have been devoting themselves to placing the museum on the campus map, helping develop effective curricular programs that could maximize the advantage of the museum’s collections regardless of disciplinary focus or course level. In an article for University Museums and Collections Journal, Milkova summarized their experience into some strategies for academic museums and galleries on building successful outreach programs.The Allen Memorial Art Museum (AMAM) of Oberlin College (Photo via college website) • Create a full-time position for a trained art historian, archeologist, anthropologist or another specialist with interdisciplinary background, deep knowledge of material culture, extensive teaching experience, and dynamic and engaging personal style to conduct outreach to the academic community. • Work with your campus teaching and learning center to determine awareness of and interest in object-based pedagogies among the faculty, as well as the constituencies that would benefit the most from them. • Secure the support of the museum/gallery director and the college/university’s academic deans; be prepared to discuss the benefits of teaching with art and to present data from other institutions. • Develop short informational sessions on teaching with collections and implement them within existing pedagogy workshops, departmental meetings, training sessions, academic gatherings, centers, etc. • Enlist faculty who already have taught with collections to share insights and conduct short teaching demonstrations for their colleagues who can see first-hand the kinds of learning experiences that can be orchestrated for their students. Allow time for discussion and collective brainstorming. • Design museum/gallery workshops specifically geared towards all newly hired faculty and select new staff members. Include interactive components and presentations from current faculty. Conduct workshops before the start of the academic semester, so there is sufficient time for faculty to conceive of and add museum visits to their syllabi. • Establish clear rules or expectations for individual roles when planning and implementing museum class sessions. • Seek investment from the art history and studio art departments in making art accessible and relevant to all academic disciplines and in utilizing tools and methods from art history, an intrinsically interdisciplinary field. Typically the most frequent users of the museum, art history and studio art faculty may feel that expanding the museum’s integration into the curriculum might limit their and their students’ own access to the collection, so it will be helpful to secure their support and assistance early on. • Consider offering social occasions (such as receptions) to bring faculty and senior administrators to the museum and/or financial support (grants, fellowships) to faculty interested in working with curators and the collection to develop museum components for their courses. • Stress to all audiences that collections offer many possibilities beyond content-related connections. Also emphasize that works of art can be used as the vehicles for cultivating or enhancing a variety of skills and thinking dispositions. • Educate key campus populations about your museum/gallery’s operations, why museum rules exists and why they must be followed. • Produce short informational brochures (with concrete examples and useful tips) to distribute to faculty and staff. • Attend general faculty meetings and other events, where useful knowledge can be gained and the museum/gallery presence will be noted. Campus visibility for museum curators and educators is very important. • Consult other academic museum/gallery staff about strategies that have worked for them. • Identify courses with close ties to the collection and contact their instructors with concrete suggestions for artworks and ways to integrate them into the course syllabus. • Create opportunities for faculty from many disciplines to meet and mingle with the curatorial staff – often new ideas and collaborative projects emerge from exactly such situations. • Keep your museum/gallery staff informed about new pedagogies and what makes them effective for millennial learners.Source | University Museums and Collections JournalAuthor | Liliana MilkovaEditor | Lu Yufan
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: Upcoming Museum Sim Lets Players Combine Artifacts to Tell Cool Stories

2019-11-15

Finally, a museum-themed sim is about to come. Naming the sim Mondo Museum, its designer Michel McBride-Charpentier said it’s intended to represent an ideal version of what museums can be.In the game that is scheduled to come in 2020, players will build and curate museums, mixing and matching artistic and historic objects. McBride-Charpentier said that the game won’t feature any fictional art or fictional history. What’s more, the sim will encourage players to contextualize history by combining different objects across time and regions. For example, McBride-Charpentier plans to put in the game a collection of space-related objects, and players could combine models of the solar system with artifacts from ancient Egypt to show how Egyptians understood astronomy. “The goal is to get players to seeing these relationships between items from separate collections and how they might combine together.” McBride-Charpentier said.McBride-Charpentier said he was inspired by his research trips to prestigious museums in the United States and Canada, especially how those museums mix a variety of objects together. But he also emphasized that the game won’t reflect what the museums currently are, but will be “a more utopian version of what museums should be like” - for example, there won’t be security guards in the game, and players will have to manage the wear and tear on exhibits from handsy visitors themselves; and the game won’t uphold the often exclusionary system of large museums, including the practice of holding onto artifacts that were looted from their countries of origin. If players want to showcase objects from different origins, they will have to ask loans from museums where these items rightly belong, and in order for the loan to succeed, players also need to have their museums checked by the museum directors, to see if it’s good enough to display their items.McBride-Charpentier said he wants to create a game that both satisfies management sim diehards and helps players to see real-life museums in a new light.Source | KotakuAuthor | Gita JacksonEditor | Lu Yufan
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Child Public Education Reservation Form

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Adult Public Education Event Reservation Form

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Group Public Education Event Reservation Form

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Group Visit Agreement
and Statement

CAFA Art Museum Publication Authorization Agreement

I fully agree to CAFA Art Museum (CAFAM) submitting to CAFA for publication the images, pictures, texts, writings, and event products (such as works created during participation in workshops) related to me from my participation in public events (including museum member events) organized by the CAFA Art Museum Public Education Department. CAFA can publish these materials by electronic, web, or other digital means, and I hereby agree to be included in the China Knowledge Resource Bank, the CAFA Database, the CAFA Art Museum Database, and related data, documentation, and filing institutions and platforms. Regarding their use in CAFA and dissemination on the internet, I agree to make use of these rights according to the stated Rules.

CAFA Art Museum Event Safety Disclaimer

Article I

This event was organized on the principles of fairness, impartiality, and voluntary participation and withdrawal. Participants undertake all risk and liability for themselves. All events have risks, and participants must be aware of the risks related to their chosen event.

Article II

Event participants must abide by the laws and regulations of the People’s Republic of China, as well as moral and ethical norms. All participants must demonstrate good character, respect for others, friendship, and a willingness to help others.

Article III

Event participants should be adults (people 18 years or older with full civil legal capacity). Underage persons must be accompanied by an adult.

Article IV

Event participants undertake all liability for their personal safety during the event, and event participants are encouraged to purchase personal safety insurance. Should an accident occur during an event, persons not involved in the accident and the museum do not undertake any liability for the accident, but both have the obligation to provide assistance. Event participants should actively organize and implement rescue efforts, but do not undertake any legal or economic liability for the accident itself. The museum does not undertake civil or joint liability for the personal safety of event participants.

Article V

During the event, event participants should respect the order of the museum event and ensure the safety of the museum site, the artworks in displays, exhibitions, and collections, and the derived products. If an event causes any degree of loss or damage to the museum site, space, artworks, or derived products due to an individual, persons not involved in the accident and the museum do not undertake any liability for losses. The event participant must negotiate and provide compensation according to the relevant legal statutes and museum rules. The museum may sue for legal and financial liability.

Article VI

Event participants will participate in the event under the guidance of museum staff and event leaders or instructors and must correctly use the painting tools, materials, equipment, and/or facilities provided for the event. If a participant causes injury or harm to him/herself or others while using the painting tools, materials, equipment, and/or facilities, or causes the damage or destruction of the tools, materials, equipment, and/or facilities, the event participant must undertake all related liability and provide compensation for the financial losses. Persons not involved in the accident and the museum do not undertake any liability for personal accidents.

CAFA Art Museum Portraiture Rights Licensing Agreement

According to The Advertising Law of the People’s Republic of China, The General Principles of the Civil Law of the People’s Republic of China, and The Provisional Opinions of the Supreme People’s Court on Some Issues Related to the Full Implementation of the General Principles of the Civil Law of the People’s Republic of China, and upon friendly negotiation, Party A and Party B have arrived at the following agreement regarding the use of works bearing Party A’s image in order to clarify the rights and obligations of the portrait licenser (Party A) and the user (Party B):

I. General Provisions

(1) Party A is the portraiture rights holder in this agreement. Party A voluntarily licenses its portraiture rights to Party B for the purposes stipulated in this agreement and permitted by law.

(2) Party B (CAFA Art Museum) is a specialized, international modern art museum. CAFA Art Museum keeps pace with the times, and works to create an open, free, and academic space and atmosphere for positive interaction with groups, corporations, institutions, artists, and visitors. With CAFA’s academic research as a foundation, the museum plans multi-disciplinary exhibitions, conferences, and public education events with participants from around the world, providing a platform for exchange, learning, and exhibition for CAFA’s students and instructors, artists from around the world, and the general public. As a public institution, the primary purposes of CAFA Art Museum’s public education events are academic and beneficial to society.

(3) Party B will photograph all CAFA Public Education Department events for Party A.

II. Content, Forms of Use, and Geographical Scope of Use

(1) Content. The content of images taken by Party B bearing Party A’s likeness include: ① CAFA Art Museum ② CAFA campus ③ All events planned or executed by the CAFAM Public Education Department.

(2) Forms of Use. For use in CAFA’s publications, products with CDs, and promotional materials.

(3) Geographical Scope of Use

The applicable geographic scope is global.

The media in which the portraiture may be used encompasses any media that does not infringe upon Party A’s portraiture rights (e.g., magazines and the internet).

III. Term of Portraiture Rights Use

Use in perpetuity.

IV. Licensing Fees

The fees for images bearing Party A’s likeness will be undertaken by Party B.

After completion, Party B does not need to pay any fees to Party A for images bearing Party A’s likeness.

Additional Terms

(1) All matters not discussed in this agreement shall be resolved through friendly negotiation between both parties. Both parties may then sign a supplementary agreement, provided it does not violate any laws or regulations.

(2) This agreement comes into effect on the date that it is signed (sealed) and the relevant boxes are selected by Party A and Party B.

(3) This agreement exists in paper and electronic forms. The paper form is made in duplicate, with Party A and Party B each retaining one copy with the same legal efficacy.

Event participants implicitly accept and undertake all the obligations stated in this agreement. Those who do not consent will be seen as abandoning the right to participate in this event. Before participating in this event, please speak to your family members to obtain their consent and inform them of this disclaimer. After participants sign/check the required box, participants and their families will be seen as having read and agreed to these terms.

I have carefully read and agree to the above provisions.

Group Visit Agreement
and Statement

CAFA Art Museum Publication Authorization Agreement

CAFA Art Museum Event Safety Disclaimer

Article I

Article II

Article III

Event participants should be adults (people 18 years or older with full civil legal capacity). Underage persons must be accompanied by an adult.

Article IV

Article V

Article VI

CAFA Art Museum Portraiture Rights Licensing Agreement

I. General Provisions

(1) Party A is the portraiture rights holder in this agreement. Party A voluntarily licenses its portraiture rights to Party B for the purposes stipulated in this agreement and permitted by law.

(3) Party B will photograph all CAFA Public Education Department events for Party A.

II. Content, Forms of Use, and Geographical Scope of Use

(2) Forms of Use. For use in CAFA’s publications, products with CDs, and promotional materials.

(3) Geographical Scope of Use

The applicable geographic scope is global.

The media in which the portraiture may be used encompasses any media that does not infringe upon Party A’s portraiture rights (e.g., magazines and the internet).

III. Term of Portraiture Rights Use

Use in perpetuity.

IV. Licensing Fees

The fees for images bearing Party A’s likeness will be undertaken by Party B.

After completion, Party B does not need to pay any fees to Party A for images bearing Party A’s likeness.

Additional Terms

(2) This agreement comes into effect on the date that it is signed (sealed) and the relevant boxes are selected by Party A and Party B.

(3) This agreement exists in paper and electronic forms. The paper form is made in duplicate, with Party A and Party B each retaining one copy with the same legal efficacy.

I have carefully read and agree to the above provisions.

Group Visit Agreement
and Statement

CAFA Art Museum Publication Authorization Agreement

CAFA Art Museum Event Safety Disclaimer

Article I

Article II

Article III

Event participants should be adults (people 18 years or older with full civil legal capacity). Underage persons must be accompanied by an adult.

Article IV

Article V

Article VI

CAFA Art Museum Portraiture Rights Licensing Agreement

I. General Provisions

(1) Party A is the portraiture rights holder in this agreement. Party A voluntarily licenses its portraiture rights to Party B for the purposes stipulated in this agreement and permitted by law.

(3) Party B will photograph all CAFA Public Education Department events for Party A.

II. Content, Forms of Use, and Geographical Scope of Use

(2) Forms of Use. For use in CAFA’s publications, products with CDs, and promotional materials.

(3) Geographical Scope of Use

The applicable geographic scope is global.

The media in which the portraiture may be used encompasses any media that does not infringe upon Party A’s portraiture rights (e.g., magazines and the internet).

III. Term of Portraiture Rights Use

Use in perpetuity.

IV. Licensing Fees

The fees for images bearing Party A’s likeness will be undertaken by Party B.

After completion, Party B does not need to pay any fees to Party A for images bearing Party A’s likeness.

Additional Terms

(2) This agreement comes into effect on the date that it is signed (sealed) and the relevant boxes are selected by Party A and Party B.

(3) This agreement exists in paper and electronic forms. The paper form is made in duplicate, with Party A and Party B each retaining one copy with the same legal efficacy.

I have carefully read and agree to the above provisions.