Overview of the development of museums in modern China

Zhejiang Museum

For more than 100 years, museums have gone through a very unusual path in China. Around the 1860s and 1870s, facilities similar to museums appeared in China. By 1905, Zhang Jian, who advocated saving the country through industry and education, founded the Nantong Museum, the first museum built by the Chinese themselves, in Nantong, Jiangsu. The birth of Nantong Museum is undoubtedly a major event in the continuous expansion of the "public domain" in China in modern times. What is quite interesting is that when Zhang Jian founded the Nantong Museum, he encouraged the people in his hometown to "collect his hometown, go to his clinic, and share it with the public" ("Tongzhou Museum Respects the Collection of Poems and Essays of Tong's Ancestors") On the other hand, there is a pertinent inscription on the stone forehead of the museum: "I hope that those who come to view it will be generous and preserve it for public benefit as if it were private property, without any damage or defects." (According to "Nantong") "Museum Document Collection") was written in the early 20th century. At that time, there were of course no laws and regulations for the protection of cultural relics, and the relevant public awareness was extremely lacking. Otherwise, Mr. Zhang's words would not reveal such helplessness. However, even after the enactment of the Cultural Relics Regulations, and even to this day, to what extent has the image that this No. 1 industrialist wanted to guard against been eliminated? In 1914, with the collected cultural relics and antiques from the Qing imperial palaces in Fengtian (today's Shenyang) and Rehe (today's Chengde) as the main collections, an antiquities exhibition hall was established in the Wenhua Hall and Wuying Hall of the Forbidden City in Beijing. This is China's first museum based on the imperial palace and royal collection, setting a precedent for the socialization of the imperial palace. On October 10, 1925, the Palace Museum was officially established and opened to the public. "The streets in the capital were crowded with people eager to take advantage of this National Day holiday to get a glimpse of this thousands-year-old mystery." (Quoted from the article "History of Chinese Museums" in "Encyclopedia of China? Cultural Relics Museum Volume") The deep significance of socializing the imperial palace and its collections lies in overthrowing the imperial power from the political system following the Revolution of 1911, and further transforming cultural undertakings. Impact and cleanse various traditional concepts molded by the "family world" political form. The "family world" is transformed into a "public society" world, and a new type of "national" consciousness and the accompanying citizen consciousness may be awakened through this, or become more deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. An article at that time titled "Two Tours of the Palace Museum in the Middle East" said: "...During the period when the Qing Palace was fully open to the public, the dignity of the palace for thousands of years was once unattainable in dreams. We walked with our heads high, looking out and talking and laughing." The article praised this as the only "unsatisfactory" thing in the mountains since the founding of the Republic of China. In general terms, museums, as the fruits of modern democracy and as the practical manifestation of democratic beliefs in the process of universal lifelong education, are established, maintained, and developed based on the clear rights granted by the law. Only in this way can its purpose of pursuing science and serving the public be implemented and guaranteed. The relationship between museum behavior and national will can be illustrated by the following example. In 1929, on the basis of Wuxi's economic and cultural development, the "Wuxi Municipal Preparatory Office" (Wuxi was changed from a county to a city this year, and this administrative agency was established) proposed a plan to "prepare a history museum." This was at the time when the Kuomintang The government promotes cultural absolutism, advocates respecting Confucius and reading scriptures, and promulgates the "Measures for the Organization of Confucius Temples". Therefore, the Wuxi County Education Bureau proposed to collect documents and antiquities based on the existing sacrificial vessels and musical instruments at the original site of the Wuxi Confucius Temple to create a "county temple." "History Museum". This plan was quickly adopted because it was consistent with the requirements of the national ideology. Dalian Museum of Natural History

In the past half century, China's museum work has made unprecedented achievements. This reflects the profound changes that have taken place in Chinese society. However, in those years when the ultra-leftist line was pursued, museum work also exposed many problems, such as due to the influence of the economic model and the public policy. The excessive "administration" and "institutionalization" of ** cultural institutions is, at a deeper level, due to the serious distortion and shrinkage of the public space in society. Many museums have an air of bureaucracy, and their behaviors are often contrary to the regulations. The purpose of serving the public. What needs to be taken as a warning is that under the slogan "everything serves politics", museum work once lost its proper scientific spirit, such as misinterpreting, tampering or forging collections.

A museum expert later admitted that he had tampered with dozens of reproductions before, during and after the Cultural Revolution; using the "shifting method", "worm-eaten method", "excavation method", and covering method " and other methods and techniques to swap, delete, remove, add, shift, and transplant the name and position of someone or something on the replica. (Xiao Guidong: "The use of tampered replicas must be stopped. 》) This has greatly hindered and undermined the healthy development of China’s museum industry.