Zhang Qian

zhqcindy@163.com

Representing different kinds of museums from various countries, dozens of curators gathered in Shenzhen on Thursday afternoon and participated in a panel discussion to talk about innovation and the future direction of museums under the challenging circumstances of today.

Though they speak different languages, come from different ethnicities and are responsible for managing different types of museums, most of the curators or representatives agree that the development of museums is undergoing an age of unprecedented challenges, although with great opportunities.

Thus, exploring the future paths of all kinds of museums is believed to be one of the key topics being dealt with at the UNESCO High-level Forum on Museums, which opened in Shenzhen on Thursday morning.

Several directors delivered speeches at the panel seminar at the Wuzhou Guest House on Thursday morning with each introducing their own understanding and experiences exploring future trends.

“In the past decade, there was a booming growth of museums in China, which is a delightful thing for both the country and the world,” said Wei Jun, director of the Guangdong Museum.

“In such an era of innovation, each museum should redefine itself based on its unique characteristic,” said Wei. He then introduced how the Guangdong Museum has paved its way to becoming more innovative and attractive for its visitors.

Technology is one of the tools that the museums of today should use. The Guangdong Museum in Guangzhou has been open to the public for 57 years and began adopting new technologies to involve its audience.

According to Wei, the museum has developed a customized app that can locate its visitors during their tour around the museum and guide them to any corner they want to visit.

To more effectively manage the museum and the antiques it houses, the Guangdong Museum also set up an Internet system that can digitize the management of the interior environment such as temperature, pollution control and so forth.

Apart from technology, the museum must also try to be more innovative and accessible to a large variety of visitors regardless of space limitations.

In 2004, the museum initiated a project called the Guangdong Mobile Museum that brought valuable art pieces and antiques to rural areas in Guangdong, where people rarely had chance to see the entries.

While some time-honored museums in big countries have explored their future direction using the most cutting-edge technologies and concepts, some museums in less-developed countries have also tried becoming more appealing to museum-goers with more progressive activities.

Jean-Paul Koudougou, director of the Burkina Faso National Museum, described how his museum — in a French-speaking country in Africa — developed itself.

“Nearly 85 percent of the exhibited objects are displaying the cultures of a wide variety of ethic groups in our country,” said Koudougou. “Since we have very limited exhibition space, we tried very hard to attract more visitors by holding different cultural activities and engaging people from the local ethnic groups.”

The African curator said that by engaging local people, they had earned much more trust and interest from the local community, and even people from rural places.

“Though we suffer from many limitations of space, financial support and technology, we believe that we still need to do a lot to bring visitors better services and make them value their tours at the museum,” said Koudougou.

Editor: Jane Chen