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Free public museums for the masses to plant seeds of culture
By Ni Tao |
February 25, 2011, Friday
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Print Edition
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MY hat's off to China's cultural officials.
At a press conference on February 18 by the ministries of culture and finance, the authorities said 1.8 billion yuan (US$270 million) will be earmarked to subsidize free admission to most public art galleries, libraries and museums across the country.
Starting March 5, the Shanghai Art Museum will lead the initiative with a free exhibition of the oeuvres of master painters Lin Fengmian and Wu Guanzhong.
This follows an official proposal early last month that public cultural facilities scrap admission fees to boost attendance and help hone the public's appreciation for fine art and science.
This move merits plaudits. The proportion of China's libraries to population, 1 to 459,000, is far below the global average of 1 to 20,000, and it belies the "cultural power" label the nation proudly attaches to itself.
For a country that splurges astonishing sums on vanity projects every year, its paltry cultural outlay is equally astonishing.
And mind you, many of the museums and galleries seldom record the same high number of visitors flocking to their Western equivalents, including the British Museum, the Louvre or the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Only on rare occasions - when its exhibits are world-famous treasure troves - do I see long lines before the Shanghai Museum.
Many visitors, of course, are kept away by high ticket prices. But now that admission will become free, will people show much eagerness to enter? The answer lies in the possibility of a change in the general cultural landscape.
This free-entry initiative provides the incentive for people to improve themselves in the halls of knowledge.
Its significance is more apparent when seen in perspective. In an era when vulgarity reigns and sells, the measure is a timely antidote to the coarsening of the public discourse by an excess of cultural trash.
Human nature evolves over millennia but retains base elements such as the lust for whatever appeals to unsophisticated human instincts.
Low-brow
In days of yore, culture was a prerogative of men of letters, who took it seriously, and it was off-limits to commoners.
In today's democratic marketplace, where everything can be obtained at a price, culture is known as an "industry."
And industrialists don't apply a sense of sanctity to this word. When accused of cashing in on obscenity, they can always get away with excuses like free speech.
Yet even in the usually permissive West, free speech has its limits.
Publications like Playboy will probably never cease to exit, but there are a fair number of high-brow publications and institutions, be they The New Yorker or the New York Philharmonic, to counter its offensive influence.
I dare to say if Playboy is given the imprimatur in China, it'll sell like hotcakes and no high-brow rival will emerge to challenge it. That's why such institutions as libraries still matter today, as a bastion of civilization against the onslaught of vulgarity.
The great thing about the American way of cultural life is that while the obscene and the refined can co-exist, there are certain areas where the former should be excluded.
Chinese in general tend to be more conservative about public nudity than Westerners. Yet a multitude of sexually explicit lingerie ads in Shanghai's subway tell a different story.
Until recently, the metro operator appeared wont to reserve ad space only for the highest bidders. This has begun to change. During my daily commute, switching between metro lines at People's Square, I've noticed a literature promotion program titled "Metro Rides Wax Poetic" currently underway underground.
The program features Chinese and Western poems on ad panels. I saw poems by Alexander Pushkin, among others, displayed bilingually.
The replacement of some advertisements with literary works perhaps results from the awareness of the harmful expansion of low-brow "culture." With the plan to give the public free access to museums and libraries, we may expect such consciousness to be raised.
'Conqueror' mindset
But the free-entry move is not without skeptics. Wenhui Daily published articles on Monday and Tuesday detailing problems that marred short-term experiments with free entry into museums and libraries.
Problems are mostly the result of visitors' bad public behavior. Some stay all day long in air-conditioned libraries just to seek respite from summer heat. Some rinse their feet with jugs of drinking water "smuggled" from libraries. A 4-year-old toddler would have urinated against a work by renowned painter Qi Baishi, if the staff had not intervened at a Shanghai art gallery. His parent watched while the boy was up to mischief.
Some Chinese visitors' lack of modesty can be blamed on the fact that they don't feel particularly small or awed before a work of art or repository of knowledge. Indeed, some have the notorious habit of carving their names and other words on relics - "conquerors" wherever they go.
Only animals mark their turf this way, another indication that human evolution is still underway.
The "conquerors" will likely evolve after long immersion in high-brow art teaches them humility and shame.
The free-entry initiative represents a meaningful start. But will it strike a high note that's hard to echo, as the Chinese often say, or become a steep learning curve?
Time will tell.
At a press conference on February 18 by the ministries of culture and finance, the authorities said 1.8 billion yuan (US$270 million) will be earmarked to subsidize free admission to most public art galleries, libraries and museums across the country.
Starting March 5, the Shanghai Art Museum will lead the initiative with a free exhibition of the oeuvres of master painters Lin Fengmian and Wu Guanzhong.
This follows an official proposal early last month that public cultural facilities scrap admission fees to boost attendance and help hone the public's appreciation for fine art and science.
This move merits plaudits. The proportion of China's libraries to population, 1 to 459,000, is far below the global average of 1 to 20,000, and it belies the "cultural power" label the nation proudly attaches to itself.
For a country that splurges astonishing sums on vanity projects every year, its paltry cultural outlay is equally astonishing.
And mind you, many of the museums and galleries seldom record the same high number of visitors flocking to their Western equivalents, including the British Museum, the Louvre or the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Only on rare occasions - when its exhibits are world-famous treasure troves - do I see long lines before the Shanghai Museum.
Many visitors, of course, are kept away by high ticket prices. But now that admission will become free, will people show much eagerness to enter? The answer lies in the possibility of a change in the general cultural landscape.
This free-entry initiative provides the incentive for people to improve themselves in the halls of knowledge.
Its significance is more apparent when seen in perspective. In an era when vulgarity reigns and sells, the measure is a timely antidote to the coarsening of the public discourse by an excess of cultural trash.
Human nature evolves over millennia but retains base elements such as the lust for whatever appeals to unsophisticated human instincts.
Low-brow
In days of yore, culture was a prerogative of men of letters, who took it seriously, and it was off-limits to commoners.
In today's democratic marketplace, where everything can be obtained at a price, culture is known as an "industry."
And industrialists don't apply a sense of sanctity to this word. When accused of cashing in on obscenity, they can always get away with excuses like free speech.
Yet even in the usually permissive West, free speech has its limits.
Publications like Playboy will probably never cease to exit, but there are a fair number of high-brow publications and institutions, be they The New Yorker or the New York Philharmonic, to counter its offensive influence.
I dare to say if Playboy is given the imprimatur in China, it'll sell like hotcakes and no high-brow rival will emerge to challenge it. That's why such institutions as libraries still matter today, as a bastion of civilization against the onslaught of vulgarity.
The great thing about the American way of cultural life is that while the obscene and the refined can co-exist, there are certain areas where the former should be excluded.
Chinese in general tend to be more conservative about public nudity than Westerners. Yet a multitude of sexually explicit lingerie ads in Shanghai's subway tell a different story.
Until recently, the metro operator appeared wont to reserve ad space only for the highest bidders. This has begun to change. During my daily commute, switching between metro lines at People's Square, I've noticed a literature promotion program titled "Metro Rides Wax Poetic" currently underway underground.
The program features Chinese and Western poems on ad panels. I saw poems by Alexander Pushkin, among others, displayed bilingually.
The replacement of some advertisements with literary works perhaps results from the awareness of the harmful expansion of low-brow "culture." With the plan to give the public free access to museums and libraries, we may expect such consciousness to be raised.
'Conqueror' mindset
But the free-entry move is not without skeptics. Wenhui Daily published articles on Monday and Tuesday detailing problems that marred short-term experiments with free entry into museums and libraries.
Problems are mostly the result of visitors' bad public behavior. Some stay all day long in air-conditioned libraries just to seek respite from summer heat. Some rinse their feet with jugs of drinking water "smuggled" from libraries. A 4-year-old toddler would have urinated against a work by renowned painter Qi Baishi, if the staff had not intervened at a Shanghai art gallery. His parent watched while the boy was up to mischief.
Some Chinese visitors' lack of modesty can be blamed on the fact that they don't feel particularly small or awed before a work of art or repository of knowledge. Indeed, some have the notorious habit of carving their names and other words on relics - "conquerors" wherever they go.
Only animals mark their turf this way, another indication that human evolution is still underway.
The "conquerors" will likely evolve after long immersion in high-brow art teaches them humility and shame.
The free-entry initiative represents a meaningful start. But will it strike a high note that's hard to echo, as the Chinese often say, or become a steep learning curve?
Time will tell.
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