When it comes to cultural heritage resources, the Greater Bay Area is not considered rich. However, the two museums I recently encountered in the Greater Bay Area - the Hong Kong Palace Museum and the Cantonese Opera Art Museum - both gave me an unexpected surprise that was different from traditional museums.
Both museums are very young and are products of the wave of museum construction in recent years. The former is located in Hong Kong and opened less than three years ago, while the latter is located in Guangzhou and opened to the public in 2016. One of them is like a comprehensive "Big Mac", and the other is deeply involved in vertical subdivisions. There seems to be no comparison. The experience of visiting these two museums made me think: besides displaying cultural relics, what else can museums do? In addition to priceless exhibits, how else can museums enrich and deepen the public’s viewing experience and cultural understanding?
With the aura of the "Forbidden City" above its head and the stunning scenery of Victoria Harbor, the Hong Kong Palace Museum seems to combine many of the characteristics of a "top-notch" museum. However, in the author’s opinion, the biggest surprise it brings to the public lies in the curatorial thinking of retelling historical and cultural stories by superimposing cultural relics and treasures on immersive exhibitions and interactive installation experiences. This is a kind of re-creation, exploring the way for a new form of cultural museum exhibition.
This may have to do with the identity of the Hong Kong Palace Museum - not a branch of the Palace Museum in Beijing as many people think, but an institution cooperating between the West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong and the Palace Museum in Beijing. When the museum was first built, it wanted to act not only as a inheritor of traditional culture, but also to take traditional culture as its foundation, face the present, and face the world. Therefore, it realized that the Forbidden City in Beijing was limited by the protection of ancient history. Some ideas that could not be realized in the construction of the museum itself.
Several permanent cultural exhibitions in the Forbidden City best illustrate the renewal of this curatorial thinking on the public viewing experience. Ancient paintings, ancient ceramics, screens, seals...the exhibits are all selected from the treasures collected by the Forbidden City in Beijing, and cover traditional categories common to cultural and museum institutions. Thanks to the fact that almost every chapter of the exhibition is interspersed with immersive scene design or multimedia interactive installations, the presentation of numerous cultural relics is airy and rhythmic, and the unfolding of the story line is full and full of dramatic tension.
Let’s talk about the permanent exhibition “A Day in the Forbidden City: Court Life in the Qing Dynasty”. The experience of viewing the exhibition is like a "one-day trip" by contemporary people to the Qing Palace. A gorgeous Western clock reminds that "the day's plan begins in the morning", opening the first chapter of the exhibition. In addition to the physical exhibits such as washbasins, clocks, mirrors and other daily necessities, as well as clothing and accessories such as auspicious clothes, official hats, and accessories, a live-action video restores the entire process of the emperor's dressing and grooming in the morning. The stage was moved, a cloister was built, and cubes were stacked to create a simple rockery. Costumes, playbooks and other cultural relics were echoed with the garden-like scene, creating an immersive leisure experience of listening to plays and playing in the Forbidden City. To appreciate the elegant lifestyle of emperors appreciating and copying, in addition to appreciating calligraphy, inscriptions and study rooms in the exhibition hall, you can also try to copy "Lanting Preface" on the touch-sensitive interactive screen. The ending of the exhibition, which takes place at night in the Forbidden City, is even more stunning. Lying on the circular sofa, with a multimedia video projected from the ceiling, which is an art installation called "Dream", the audience will "sneak into" the "dreamland" of Emperor Qianlong and remember his beloved wife who passed away through Qianlong - - "Ode to the Sorrow" written by Empress Xiaoxian Chun, comprehending the unknown fragility and secret spiritual world of the emperor. A sacred symbol is thus reduced to a living, understandable person.
This exhibition experience is fresh, smooth, and even fashionable, which is obviously different from common cultural exhibitions. Many interactive experiences deepen the audience's understanding of cultural relics and the history and culture behind them through the dialogue between today's people and ancient times.
The Cantonese Opera Art Museum’s deeply rooted viewing experience is also representative. Located in Yongqingfang, Guangzhou’s Internet celebrity district, the theme it focuses on - the art of Cantonese opera, not only fits the historical context of the original location where the exhibition hall is located, but also seems to continue in this area in a living form. Grow, sprout new branches. The path of integrating culture and tourism, as well as the top-level design like a living museum, all effectively deepen the audience's impression of the theme of this museum, and thereby shorten the distance between people and the Lingnan culture where Cantonese opera art is deeply rooted.
The newly built garden-style museum determines that the Cantonese Opera Art Museum is different from many museums with modern building shells, and also different from many museums that were originally located in historical buildings. Rather than saying that this is a museum, it is better to say that this is an experience space that can be "visible, heard, and touched". On the one hand, it creates an exquisite real scene like a Lingnan garden, with a compact layout of pavilions, pavilions, bridges and flowing water, and the interstices of banana trees, lychee trees, poinciana and other trees, jointly restoring the birth and growth of Cantonese opera. environment; on the other hand, its exhibition space conditions are modern, allowing many exhibition methods that keep pace with the times, such as the introduction of new media exhibition items, to be implemented here. After visiting the indoor Cantonese opera theme exhibition, from time to time, you can follow the melodious music and walk to the center of the garden. The audience can look up across the pond at the stage with eaves and ridges, and encounter an authentic Cantonese opera performance up close. Feel the beauty of Cantonese opera singing and gorgeous costumes.
It is worth mentioning that the Cantonese Opera Art Museum’s restoration of Cantonese opera situations is not created out of thin air, but is rooted in the historical context of its location. Yongqingfang is located in Xiguan, Guangzhou. Cantonese opera, which originated from Nan Opera and originated in Foshan, is developing in Xiguan, Guangzhou. The Yongqingfang area still retains many cultural relics related to Cantonese opera, such as the industry union that led the development of Cantonese opera, the Bahe Guild Hall, known as the "ancestral home" of Cantonese opera, and the former accommodation venue of the Cantonese opera troupe's "Dragon and Tiger Warriors" Luen Yu Tong, the ancestral home of Bruce Lee, the father of Bruce Lee and one of the "Four Famous Ugly" in Cantonese Opera, Li Haiquan, has lived for more than ten years, and so on. It can be said that the memory of Cantonese opera has injected soul into Yongqingfang, making it stand out from the renovated historical districts in many cities that look similar, and have its own unique recognition. At the same time, Cantonese opera is still flourishing in this area. In the Liwan Lake Park next to Yongqingfang, you can see fans gathering together to play the erhu, dulcimer and humming Cantonese opera, forming a lively "private partnership". The Litchiwan Grand Stage also has singing time every afternoon. Rain or shine, 365 days a year.
Isn’t this another immersive experience for museum visitors? Let people immerse themselves in the soil where Cantonese opera grows, and get closer to the traditional Lingnan culture.
With the tide of museum construction, what kind of museum do people really need? The Hong Kong Palace Museum and the Museum of Cantonese Opera Art, two museums with their own charms and each becoming the cultural engine of the city where they are located, offer two different explorations, but they are equally novel and full of enlightenment.
It can be seen from this that the development of today’s museums may wish to break away from the rigid stereotypes that only focus on the number and specifications of collections or only on the area and scale of venues. Chen Jianming, former director of the Hunan Provincial Museum and museum scholar, mentioned in the book "What is a Museum" that museums are related to people's ultimate goal, which is happiness. The pleasure that visiting a museum brings to people is obvious, whether it is pleasure or enlightenment. Therefore, the author believes that museums should not be satisfied with just being storage rooms and exhibition venues for cultural relics. It is more necessary to think about how to better utilize the value of collections, develop a more vivid viewing experience, how to transcend buildings and become urban living rooms, and improve the quality of museums. The audience’s sense of gain and happiness index. This actually echoes the theme of this year’s International Museum Day, “Museums Dedicated to Education and Research,” emphasizing the importance of museums as innovative educational institutions that promote education, research, and cultural understanding.
By striving to become a connection between society, the public, art, and history, the museum will eventually gain people’s emotional feedback and demonstrate extraordinary humanistic care and social affinity. I believe there is more than one way, and there is no standard template. It is worth exploring by the industry from different paths.
Wen Wei Po Fan Xin