On the afternoon of November 2, 2018, the International Art Education Conference Art Museum Forum is held in the auditorium of CAFA Art Museum. As a sub-forum of this Education Conference, CAFA Art Museum takes “Opportunities and Challenges of Art museums in the Digital Age” as the topic to think about the influence of digital technology on various fields of the art museum and the boundary that the function of the art museum can expand. This forum has invited 26 artists from 9 countries to participate in the conference. They will share and exchange experience in the differences between three sections: “The Future of Art Museums”, “The Role of Art Museums in Making the Contemporary Art History” and “The Differences Between Public and University Art Museums in Art Education”.
Session I: The Future of Art Museums
Time: 14:00-17:30, Friday, November 2, 2018
Venue: The Auditorium of CAFA Art Museum
Host for speech: Gao Gao, Assistant to Director, CAFA Art Museum
Host for discussion: Zhang Zikang, Director of CAFA Art Museum
Guests: Sir Charles Saumarez-Smith, Ulf Dräger, Xu Jie, Peini Beatrice Hsieh, Hu Bin, James Bradburne, Zhang Zikang, Su Dan (list in the order of speech)
Zhang Zikang, Chairman of the Chinese side of the Art Forum, made a speech
Geoffrey Ward, Chairman of the Foreign side of the Art Forum, made a speech
Gao Gao, Host of the Art Forum
Zhang Zikang, director of CAFA Art Museum, and Geoffrey Ward, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of University of Cambridge served respectively as the chairman of the Chinese side and foreign side of this forum. On the afternoon of November 2, firstly, the first session of the forum is held to discuss the future of art museums, hosted by Gao Gao, Assistant to Director of CAFA Art Museum. After the welcome speech by the Chairs of Forum, Director Zhang Zikang posed some specific questions to the guests, such as how university art museums should make use of their college advantages, how to use digital technology to magnify this advantage in the new era, and how to have a deeper interaction with the audience, etc., which provided a broader vision for this forum.
Sir Charles Saumarez-Smith
Secretary and Chief Executive of Royal Academy of Arts
Charles Smith, Secretary and Chief Executive of Royal Academy of Arts, opened the first half speech of the session “The Future of Art Museums” with the topic of “what is the key element of constructing an art museum for the future”. Starting from the long history of the Art Museum of Royal Academy of Arts, Director Smith elaborated on how the art museum transformed from a state-protected building into a place where classical art can be displayed and preserved while contemporary art and activities can be accommodated. Particularly, Director Smith shared the experience of architectural expansion – through the repartition and application of different spaces to enable the audience to gain a diverse artistic experience at last.
The Benjamin West Lecture Theatre
Renzo Piano – Gabrielle Jungels Winkler Galleries
Ulf Dräger
Chairman of Museum Verband Sachsen-Anhalt
Then, Ulf Dräger, Chairman of Museum Verband Sachsen-Anhalt of Germany, spoke on the same topic. The difference is that Chairman Dräger emphasized the core function of the art museum from the perspective of “emotional connection with the audience”. As an important cultural hub of central Europe, Anhalt has more than 200 art museums. How to retain and share the audience with limited funds is the primary working direction of these art museums in recent years. He took the Moritzburg Museum Halle as an example to discuss in detail the way it communicates with its audience. In addition to holding collection exhibitions, special exhibitions of artists, and public education activities, Director Dräger believes that current science and technology should be used to expand online exhibitions and courses, so that audiences can fully experience the charm of the art museum and transform their impression of the museum from “a tourist attraction” to a place of inspiration.
Peini Beatrice Hsieh
Board Member/Chai of Taiwan Museums Associations
Peini Hsieh, the board member of the Taiwan Museum Associations, started from the vision of “the museum without walls” and made a speech on “Revisiting the Museum without Walls: Searching for a New Cultural Imagination of Art Museums”. The idea of “the museum without walls” comes from French philosopher Andre Malraux, who believes that the museum should be a space without hierarchical, national and cultural boundaries. This concept has guided many art museums in more than half a century since it was proposed. In her specific speech, Hsieh pointed out from another point of view that today’s art museums are gradually moving towards branding, entertaining and capitalization, thus weakening the utopian ideals proposed by Malraux, especially after the entry of technology and capital into art museums. She listed several concrete questions, such as the fact that digitalization of artworks will make the audience lose the perception of the original work and the packaging of artworks by commercial capital. However, these phenomena are not unchangeable, and she took various strategies of Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in the United States as positive cases to answer the questions. Apart from looking forward to the advantages brought by science and technology to the art museum, she hopes that people can notice the potential dangers of science and technology in education and communication. She thinks that science and technology should serve the art museum in the humanistic level, so as not to weaken the cultural accumulation and artistic spirit of the art museum.
Cleveland Art Museum massive touchscreen
COOPER HEWITT
Hu Bin
Deputy–Director of Museum of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts
Hu Bin, Deputy–Director of Museum of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, talked about “College Education, Social Connections and New Artistic Propositions”. He started from the practical experience of Museum of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts and shifted people’s attention from the wall-less museum to the social connection of the art museum. According to the historical and regional characteristics of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, Director Hu shared several main paths in the development of its museum. On the one hand, Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts partly bears the key nodes in the development of Chinese modern art history, on which its art museum has planned a series of research exhibitions, in an attempt to enrich the narration of art history from Socialist Art, Lingnan School and other perspectives. On the other hand, based on the cultural specialty of the Pearl River Delta, the art museum has also tried many local projects, hoping to facilitate the communication between different classes and groups, break the boundaries between disciplines and groups, and provide new possibilities for the experimental art and audience expansion of university art museums.
Wu Chao Studio, Suspension, Multi-frequency Animation Installation, 32‘，2016
Experimental Sculpture Studio of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts,
“Nanting Research”, Community Project, 2016
After the keynote speech in the first half, the two Chairs of the forum and four speakers discussed topics on the expansion experience of art museums, the advantages of university art museums, and the influence of digital technology on the audience’s viewing of artworks. Regarding expansion, Director Smith and Chairman Dräger think that the museum should be renovated from the point of the audience to serve them better. Concerning the advantages of university art museums, Board member Hsieh suggests that it should be started from the talents, while Director Hu believes that university art museums should still keep in touch with society. As for the various new situations emerged from viewing artworks, all the guests expressed that this is indeed a widespread phenomenon at present, and art museums should encourage the audience to get private experience from exhibitions and original works while insisting on its own core value.
Scene pictures of the first half of the forum
Xu Jie
Director of Asian Art Museum of San Francisco
The second half of the forum started with a speech by Xu Jie, Director of Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, on “Asian for All: Transforming the Asian Art Museum for the Future”. Director Xu is the first Chinese American to serve as the director of a large art museum in the history of the United States and the transformation strategy and concrete implementation of the Asian Art Museum is also a typical case of overseas art museums. In his speech, Director Xu especially mentioned the principle “Asian for All” of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, and all the work of the museum revolves around this sentence. As is known to all, the political and economic influence of Asia is growing all over the world, but its cultural influence still needs to be improved. Therefore, the Asian Art Museum employs a variety of ways to connect Asia with the world, tradition and the contemporary. Director Xu stressed that the art museum should have shareable, interesting stories so as to attract more visitors to come to see the artworks. In the end, when it came to the specific renovation plan of the art museum, Director Xu showed the spaces still under planning, such as “Art Terrace”, “Central Stage of Masterworks”, etc., which was designed to help the audience view the artworks from different angles and stimulate their interest in art.
Connecting Art to Life
ART TERRACE
James Bradburne
Director of Pinacoteca di Brera
James Bradburne, Director of Pinacoteca di Brera in Italy, spoke on “In Defense of the Real: The Future of the Art Museum in a Post-digital World”. Director Braburne firstly sorted out the mission of art museums that he agreed with. He believes that the art museum should not only be a space for exhibition, but also have the function of both research and education. As the manager and staff of the museum, he considers that the museum should let the works speak more, let the audience stay longer and see more, and acquire and create new knowledge through the study on the collection of the museum. In an increasingly digital and post-digital world, museums should not only protect material culture, but also enable the public to have access to material culture through the media while respecting its materiality. So real experience is very important. Director Braburne also mentioned the details of exhibition label, that Pinacoteca di Brera designs many kinds of exhibition labels for audiences according to their different ages and statuses. This is an excellent way to convert information into knowledge. Of course, Director Braburne also talked about that it should not be the ultimate mission of the art museum to popularize knowledge to the audience, and the art museum should help the public to transform knowledge into wisdom and create value with the audience together.
Zhang Zikang
Director of CAFA Art Museum
Zhang Zikang, Director of CAFA Art Museum, used the exhibitions and education activities that full of thinking and innovation as examples, and gave a speech entitled “Intellect Creates New Form of Art Museums”. Director Zhang first analyzed the difference between “Knowledge” and “Intellect”, as the latter is directly related to people’s logic of judging things and only with the advancement of knowledge can people promote the reproduction of knowledge. And then, based on the analysis of the digital age and the characteristics of art museums, he believes that the mission of the art museum should not be limited to the dissemination of knowledge but to construct an intellectual system. CAFA Art Museum, with its back to CAFA, has the advantage of an academic platform and a relatively stable audience. The establishment of an intellectual system will open the boundary between the academy and society for the art museum and bring more visitors to the art museum. Particularly after the set-up of the online platform of the Intellect Center in 2017, intellect documentaries and online education will directly serve the audience and maximize the strengths of the art museum itself.
Su Dan
Deputy–Director of Tsing Hua University Art Museum
Su Dan, Deputy–Director of Tsing Hua University Art Museum, is also from the university art museum. He also took the art museum of Tsing Hua University as an example to give a speech on “Community Character of University Art Museum”. Different from CAFA, Tsing Hua University is a comprehensive university and holds a different audience. Many audiences are actually interested in the university rather than the art museum. Given this situation, Director Su hopes to create a community, an organized and mutually-recognized space for interaction and resource sharing, which is also the reason why he places a special emphasis on the publicity of the art museum. Specific to the practice of the art museum, it has held some exhibitions and public education activities with good social feedback and meanwhile built a membership system.
After the four speakers of the second half finished, Director Geoffrey Ward hosted the discussion. He started with a specific issue and discussed with the guests and the on-site public how art museums could achieve the public education. Director Bradburne said that the art museum should start with details and its final goal is not to make the audience an artist or art historian, but to inspire the potential of all people.
Scene picture of the discussion in the second half of the forum
Director Zhang Zikang believes that art museums should firstly understand the audience and arouse their interest points through different exhibitions. Especially in Chinese art museums, knowledge spreading should be linear or even piecewise instead of point-like.
