Museum Processes in China Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures, tables, and illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Romanization
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Revisiting the Historical Trajectories of Modern Art Museums in China
- 3 He Xiangning Art Museum in Shenzhen
- 4 Guangdong Times Museum in Guangzhou
- 5 Hong Kong Museum of Art in Hong Kong
- 6 Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - He Xiangning Art Museum in Shenzhen
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures, tables, and illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Romanization
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Revisiting the Historical Trajectories of Modern Art Museums in China
- 3 He Xiangning Art Museum in Shenzhen
- 4 Guangdong Times Museum in Guangzhou
- 5 Hong Kong Museum of Art in Hong Kong
- 6 Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Abstract
This chapter explicates the museum circuit of the He Xiangning Art Museum in Shenzhen as a process of interplay between the state's political and cultural-economic agents, the museum's curators and academic stakeholders, and the migrant educated elites. The museum's intermediaries play a role in negotiating meaning at the interface of expertise and official discourse, and they arguably act as reflexive producers, contributing to a public sphere that has links to Habermasian ‘communicative rationality’. Besides, visitors can be categorized into six distinct identities, and they display limited alignment with the state interest in Chineseness or political patriotism. The study reflects on the national museum's contingent institutional framework, the ideological dilemma driven by its curatorial activities, and the rise of a middle-class museum public.
Keywords: national museum, cultural politics, curatorial approaches and strategies, public sphere, Chinese middle-class
The He Xiangning Art Museum is the second national art museum after the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC), and the first national art gallery named after an individual. The background of the museum is complicated, as it has a political entity regulating it. Unlike the NAMOC which is directly administered by the Ministry of Culture of the central government, the museum is officially governed by the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council and managed by the Overseas Chinese Town Group, a state-owned enterprise headquartered in Shenzhen. It was established in 1997 (the year of the handover of the sovereignty of Hong Kong from Britain to China) on a historical memorial site connected with the Chinese Communist Party and located in Shenzhen, an experimental economy-focused city bordering Hong Kong and accommodating a massive migrant population from across China. Founded in a distinctive city, the museum constitutes a unique case that reflects the state's new national agenda of co-opting cultural-academic elites and nurturing a middle-class museum public in a Chinese society that is rapidly changing.
The museum primarily aims to support the collecting, exhibiting, and researching of the art of He Xiangning (1878-1972), and also includes artworks by outstanding Chinese contemporary artists, overseas Chinese artists, women artists, and emerging young artists.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Museum Processes in ChinaThe Institutional Regulation, Production and Consumption of the Art Museums in the Greater Pearl River Delta Region, pp. 97 - 140Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019