SHRINE OF KNOWLEDGE, PALACE OF AESTHETICS, OR THEATER OF HISTORY MUSEUM DESIGN IN CHINA

OU NING

. . . un musée qui est peut-être celui de sa mémoire . . . —Chris Marker, La Jetée, !"#$

In the December $!, $%!&, issue of the Economist, an article about museums in China stated that in !"'", the country had only $( muse- ums. It went on to note that, according to the Chinese Museums Association, by $%!$ the number had increased to &,)## museums, including '(! that had opened that year. The government’s current five-year plan had projected &,(%% museums by $%!(; the goal was surpassed three years early. The United States, by comparison, saw only $% to '% museums built per year in the decade prior to the $%%) financial crisis. The article also referenced the term “museumification,” coined by Jeffrey Johnson, director of China Megacities Lab at Colum- bia University, in response to the Chinese museum boom.¹ “Museum- ification” is derived from “gentrification” and precisely sums up the motivation behind the museum-building fever. As a rising political power, China needs cultural achievements to manifest its “so, power,” and through museum building, its emerging capital can catch up to its increasing power and achieve social impact, while acquiring land for still greater commercial gain.

119 The current frenzy over museums in China is somewhat similar Drawing its inspiration from the Chinese calligraphic form of to Europe in the sixteenth century, during the Age of Discovery, when “one”—a horizontal stroke in ink—Nouvel’s winning design was consid- cabinets de curiosités or Wunderkammern showed off relics and trea- ered by NAMOC deputy director Xie Xiaofan as the most representative sures collected from colonies overseas. To promote the great Chinese of the essence of twenty-first-century China. Even though Nouvel empire’s long history and its liberal, pro-globalization image today, the borrowed the calligraphic movement to shape the building, he did not Chinese government launched a massive project of public museum take the traditional Chinese symbol literally, but gave the museum a construction to both house historical artifacts and display contempo- strong contemporary identity with a crystal-clear glass façade. In rary art. The scheme at once masks the nationalist political agenda addition, he ingeniously used the nearby dragon-shaped waterscape and declares the ambition to compete in the free market. The involve- and Olympic Green, and the future gathering of museumgoers outside ment in museum development by the private sector, on the other hand, the building, to his advantage by mirroring their reflections in the provides showrooms to demonstrate their taste in art and culture, and façade. What’s most eye-catching about his architectural rendering is ethical rationales for their profitable projects. Many private museums the sea of red flags floating above the museum’s main entrance, which are built and operated by real estate developers, as they have come to could be interpreted in different ways: the residue, in the French imagi- realize that building museums is an effective means of obtaining land nation, of Maoist intellectuals from the May !"#) uprising in Paris, or and marketing the adjacent residential projects with attractive cultural an unspoken nod to the current political power in China and to nation- packages. This motive greatly affects the design of Chinese museums. alist ideals. Whatever the implications, Nouvel’s design triumphed over The National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) is at the highest Gehry’s reserved first bid in China, which veered toward the conserva- level of art museums in the country. The original building was created tive; over Hadid’s arrogant “universal approach” with her signature to store and present a collection of ink paintings, calligraphy, oil paint- digital distortion, which lacked specificity; and the weak architectural ings, prints, and sculptures, but its design lags behind the develop- form in Koolhaas’s proposal, and the fact that his new Chinese Central ment of contemporary art in China. A,er the close of the $%%) Beijing Television Headquarters attracted much criticism in China. Summer Olympic Games, plans for a new building were formulated. Regardless of the intense competition, architects remain the hot According to the Beijing Overall Urban Planning !""#–!"!" document, topic in the Chinese museum boom. The Today Art Museum, founded the new building will be located in the center of the Olympic Green in Beijing in $%%$ by real estate developer Zhang Baoquan in his resi- north of the city center. Extending Beijing’s existing -.)-kilometer dential project Apple Community, is the country’s first private art north-south central axis, the Olympic Green, with its various Olympic museum. The site is a former industrial facility, transformed by archi- Games venues and facilities, will also include many new public cultural tect Wang Hui. Wang sealed all the windows but retained the original facilities, such as the Sinology Center, the National Arts & Cra,s brick structure. The interior floors made way for an atrium suitable for Museum, the Chinese Technology Museum, and the new NAMOC large-scale installations. He also added an asymmetrical steel stair- building, all currently in the planning stage. Upon its completion, case near the entrance, updating an architectural time capsule of the new NAMOC building will become the largest art museum in the industrialization with the contemporary taste for geometric design. In world at !&%,%%% square meters ['$#,%%% square feet], and will mainly the past decade, the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, founded collect and display twentieth-century art from China and beyond. in Beijing in $%%- by Belgian collectors Baron and Baroness Guy and The architectural competition for the building began in $%%), and more Myriam Ullens, and the Minsheng Art Museum, established in Shang- than a hundred proposals were received from architecture firms across hai in $%%) by the China Minsheng Banking Corporation, were also the globe, including Pritzker-winning starchitects , Zaha converted from old factories by the team of Jean-Michel Wilmotte and Hadid, , and . Qingyun Ma, and by Liang Jingyu, respectively. These museums were

120 121 Museum and the Xiangshan campus of the in . The innovative aesthetics that stem from Chinese traditions, which explore the memorial function of architecture and connect new structures to the pressing reality of Chinese urbanization, started to garner more domestic support only a,er Wang’s Pritzker recognition. The -designed Himalayas Art Museum, which was developed in Shanghai by realtor Dai Zhikang as part of his commer- cial Himalayas Center project, was completed in $%!!. Its alien struc- ture imitates that of forests and limestone caves, amid a complex that includes a hotel, theater, and luxury shopping mall. In $%!$, the collec- tor couple Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei opened the Long Art Museum in Pudong, Shanghai. Envisioned by architect Zhong Song, the pale granite cube has few windows and is home to the couple’s classical art collection and a portion of their contemporary holdings. (They later opened another space in Puxi especially for their contemporary art collection, designed by Liu Yichun.) In $%!&, Lu Jun and his son Fig. !!. Museum, designed by Wang Shu of Amateur Architecture Studio founded the Sifang Art Museum in , where Steven Holl captured a populist evocation of “Chinese-ness” with a hanging structure of custom-made, bamboo-mold concrete. The ambitious Sifang Parkland, either remodeled or expanded following contemporary art museum formerly known as the China International Exhibition of Practical Archi- standards, but maintained the integrity of the original buildings. Cou- tecture, is the (%-acre site for $' buildings designed by two dozen pled with proper business operations, these museums successfully architects and artists. To date, eleven of these buildings have been rejuvenated their once-dilapidated industrial neighborhoods, setting completed, but so far Sifang Art Museum is the only one in use. up a popular urban renewal model in China. In $%!', Indonesian entrepreneur and collector Budi Tek opened There was a period in China when Richard Florida’s theory of the Yuz Museum, “Yuz” being his family name in Chinese. Housed in a “creative class” and the Guggenheim’s “Bilbao effect” were all the renovated hangar in the old Shanghai Longhua Airport, the museum rage. Both the Chinese government and private investors saw the was designed by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto, who also designed creative industries as a breakpoint for urban renewal and future devel- the $%!& Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London. Fujimoto added a new opment. For many cities and communities, commissioning architects wing made completely of glass, welcoming in the vista of the surround- to design museums of curious shapes seemed the only way to stay ing greenery and making the structure a “green box.” Coming up is a competitive. Designed by Wang Shu and opened in $%%), the Ningbo more outlandish museum project in Fujian province, where artist Cai Museum made a bold statement (fig. &&). Its sloping and radiating gray Guo-Qiang, in collaboration with the city government, will establish a walls, made of bricks recycled from numerous demolition sites, juxta- contemporary art museum in his hometown of Quanzhou. The budget pose traces of time with dense and random window openings, while is estimated at !.$ billion RMB (USD.$%% million). Frank Gehry’s $%!& the angular walls outline the history and collective memory that the proposal for the Quanzhou Museum of Contemporary Art appeared to museum harbors. In $%!$, Wang became the first Chinese recipient of be much more aggressive than his conservative NAMOC bid but con- the Pritzker Architecture Prize, in part for his designs for Ningbo tinued his architectural language, with a fluid glass structure emerging

122 123 spaces but in securing the museum’s place in society. This requires content, exhibition design, audience cultivation, sustainability, and a sound infrastructure supported by a regulated system, professional knowledge, and experienced personnel. The Chinese museum fervor is propelled by power and capital, o,en too focused on spectacle-making In China, the challenge in museum-building does not lie in constructing the physical spaces but in securing the museum’s place in society.

to accommodate the real purpose of museums. Inevitably, new museums are reduced to empty shells without exhibitions or curators, and museumgoers are really there for the air conditioning, not the programming. What, then, is the purpose of museums? The museum in Chris Marker’s La Jetée (!"#$) displays animal specimens in the style of a natural history museum—a product of the Age of Discovery symboliz- ing a trove of knowledge and acting as a trigger for the protagonist’s Fig. !". Rendering for Pingtan Art Museum, designed by Ma Yansong of MAD memory. Museums hold and categorize knowledge for humankind, archive the collective memory of human beings, support historiography from a cluster of metal shapes resembling a blooming flower. In Ping- with evidence, and stage historical narratives. Through their audiences, tan, near the Fujian capital of Fuzhou, antiques collector Lin Xiaoqiang museums pass on the human experience and create new memory. has invested in China’s largest private museum, the Pingtan Art Museums can also be palaces for aesthetics, with a clear flow through Museum, which broke ground in $%!& (fig. &'). Architect Ma Yansong well-lit, open spaces appropriate for the exhibition of artifacts, trea- designed the floating island utopia around the concept of “Shanshui sures, and artworks. As public spaces, museums make knowledge and City” (a city of mountains and rivers), conjuring streamlined hills mean- the right to define history accessible to all, and allow the free, demo- dering between the sky and the ocean. The interior was conceived as cratic exchange of opinions. The design of museums should address an evocation of the natural landscape; visitors are expected to journey these values. In China, though, a growing mentality sees the country as through “heaven and earth.” a dominating power and encourages it to show off its wealth. With the The desire for spectacle in the Chinese museum boom presented limitations of political structure and ideology, the core values of museums architects with the opportunity to realize their unrestrained visions. o,en become marginalized or completely deteriorated. Some may argue that these dreams can be nightmares for others. This With most of the newly established museums favoring exotic implies not only the difficulties in execution that builders and contrac- form over function, much waste in resources becomes inevitable. The tors face, but also the negative influence that an emphasis on appear- majority of history museums have to service Communist ideology; ance can have on developers and visitors. The quality of a museum their historical narratives therefore conform to the Communist view of cannot be judged solely by its exterior; the functionality and planning history. When lacking artifacts, they o,en fill the void with artificial of the space and exhibition design matter even more. In China, the constructs, which defeats the purpose of presenting an objective truth challenge in museum-building does not lie in constructing the physical to their audiences. Owing to the didactic nature of political propaganda,

124 125 this makes audiences feel that they are being forced to accept institu- tional values. The exhibition design in these museums usually takes a,er two styles. One is that of the British Museum or the Victoria and Contemporary art museums appear more and more like shopping malls, as the bustling of art bookstores and cafes almost takes over the existence of exhibitions.

Albert Museum, with aisles of dimly lit glass display cases and spot- lights permeating the dreary atmosphere of a colonial treasure trove. The other is that of the commercial trade show, which uses new media and interactive technology to fabricate a raucous hubbub catering to the growing demand for entertainment. Contemporary art museums, by contrast, appear more and more like shopping malls, as the bustling of art bookstores and cafes almost takes over the existence of exhibi- tions, and fashionably clothed individuals mingle, drinks in hand, at exhibition openings, sparing barely a glance for the art. A museum should convey its mission through architectural and spatial design, free of political agendas and commercial aspirations. Good museum design should help visitors pay attention to the pro- grams and present a seamless viewing experience for new knowledge, history, and art education. Relying on the fantastical imagination of architects alone is far from enough for Chinese museum design. It has to be assisted by the wisdom of the likes of museum directors, curators, exhibition designers, artists, historians, and museologists. Of course, it also demands a pivotal change in the system and the state of affairs. For China, there is still a long way to go.

Note !. “Mad about museums,” Economist, December $!, $%!&, accessed online: http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/$!("!-!%-china-building -thousands-new-museums-how-will-it-fill-them-mad-about-museums

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