“Museum fever” is becoming a new fashion in China’s social culture. The number of private museums has doubled, and many folk collectors have gradually moved from “solo music” to “public music”. The reporter of China News Service visited many private museums on International Museum Day.
In Guiyang, Yang Kexin, a Guizhou girl born in 1990s, established a meteorite science museum in 2017. The museum displays hundreds of meteorites she hunted during her work in Xinjiang; Meteorite samples provided by the Lunar and Planetary Science Research Center of Chinese Academy of Sciences are also on display.
“A museum that adapts to the new era should be both beautiful and fun.” Yang Kexin said that at the beginning of the museum’s establishment, he didn’t want to use it as a “decoration” of the city. Besides opening to the outside world for free, he also organized various popular science activities and invited some meteorite experts to give lectures.
In Yang Kexin’s view, the popular science museum is more intuitive than reading any literature and watching any image materials. Such a platform can make more people know about meteorites, and also make more children interested and interested in outer space.
According to the statistics of China’s State Administration of Cultural Heritage, by the end of 2020, there were 5,788 national record museums. Among them, non-state-owned museums have sprung up, and their niche collections and unique positioning have attracted more and more attention.
In Kaili, Guizhou, Miao Xiu’s master craftsman Ou Donghua established the National Costume Museum in 2014, displaying more than 10,000 pieces. At present, it is a private museum in Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture of Guizhou Province, which has the largest and most complete collection of Miao handicrafts.
In Luoyang, Henan Province, Zhu Xiaohui, the executive director of the Jinshi Literature Museum, “specially planned the Red Newspaper Literature Exhibition, and exhibited the newspapers, periodicals and literatures collected in the museum before and after the founding of New China to the public.”
Luoyang Jinshi Character Museum is a historical special character museum founded by private capital. In 2012, Zhu Xiaohui and his brother Zhu Xiaojie founded this museum, and its collections are mainly Oracle bones, bamboo slips, seals of Qin and Han dynasties, etc., which are free and open.
Luoyang Centennial Souvenir Museum, located in Luoyang Preschool Normal School, is a private museum dedicated to displaying audio-visual historical materials. Zhang Jianluo is the founder of this museum. In 2015, he shared his collection of nearly forty years with the public.
There are many private museums like this in China. Walking through the streets and lanes, they may take a certain site, a certain skill, a certain person or a certain period of history as their theme, and they may not be large in scale, but they can always give people a glimpse of the heavy history of the city and the vivid atmosphere of human fireworks.
According to the data, in 2019, China Museum received 1.227 billion visitors, more than 100 million more than in 2018. Private museum operators in China hope to ride the east wind of “museum fever” and approach more people in various novel forms.
As a folk collector, why should you make your collection public? Zhu Xiaohui said with a smile, “Being alone is not as good as being happy.”
Zhang Jianluo said that chatting with visitors from all over the country about the stories behind the collection is his greatest daily pleasure. “It is the value of my museum to help you look back on history and understand the past.”
Of course, private museums also have their own problems, such as lack of professionals, limited space, and the most difficult one is insufficient funds.
Zhu Xiaohui said that the museum mainly depends on his brother’s enterprise “blood transfusion” to survive. However, he is optimistic about the future. “The government has started to support private museums, and we are also combining with research and cultural creation to strive for our own’ hematopoiesis’ as soon as possible. “
Long Yongming, the son of Donghua, said that in order to support the operation of the museum, stores selling ethnic costumes and silverware products were also opened. Long Yongming also displays the collections in the museum through pictures and short videos on several social platforms.
Zhang Jianluo hopes that a film and television company can cooperate with his museum.
The reporter found out that some places in China have introduced policies to support the development of private museums. For example, in Suzhou, for newly built, renovated or expanded private museums with a building area of more than 700 square meters, the maximum subsidy will not exceed RMB 2 million. Zhengzhou will give a subsidy of up to 45% of the annual rent and up to 500,000 yuan for the use of leased or owned property as a non-state-owned museum.
Yan Tiecheng, a cultural scholar, believes that folk collection is a very important part of cultural relics collection, which makes up for the deficiency of official collection, and should increase support for private museums. (Han Zhangyun, Zhou Yanling)