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September 23, 2017

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New museums to open in Shanghai, cementing their place in culture

EDITOR’S note:

Andy Boreham comes from New Zealand’s capital city, Wellington, and has lived in China, off and on, for the past five years. He has a master’s degree in Chinese culture and language from Fudan University and is interested in all things related to contemporary Chinese society. He welcomes your feedback on all of the issues he covers — you can reach him at andy.boreham@shanghaidaily.com.

I still remember the days we got to go on school excursions into “town” as a little kid back in New Zealand. Sometimes it was to congratulate national sports teams in tickertape parades down Wellington’s main street, but usually it was to museums. I guess that’s how I started to like and respect those places so much, especially since I’ve always found sports to be the most boring thing ever.

Te Papa, our national museum, hadn’t opened at that stage, so normally we would visit the war memorial museum. I don’t remember many details, but I do remember a feeling of overall awe and respect.

Museums tend to put across that feeling, regardless of what is being exhibited. They offer legitimacy and visibility to stories and artifacts and histories that should hold a special place in our hearts. And if the stories being told don’t yet occupy that place then museums, in all their glory and grandeur, certainly tell us they should.

I have a friend who makes costumes and who was asked, by our national museum, to exhibit some of his work. This instantly added legitimacy and gravitas to his work, just by virtue of his being included there.

Museums are also a convenient way to find out about a certain place on the planet, especially if you don’t have too much time to delve too deep.

Whenever I visit a new place, I try to get along to at least one local museum, as a way to get some sort of an insight into official versions of history, which is always an accessible and interesting place to start. That included many places in China like Kunming, Tianjin, Nanjing, Changsha, Ningbo, Dali, Zhengzhou, and many more.

And so it was when I first came to Shanghai. Some of the museums I’ve visited and enjoyed include the Power Station of Art, a contemporary art museum housed in an old, converted power station (hence the name), Rockbund Art Museum, down near the Bund, Shanghai Natural History Museum, the China Art Museum at the Pavilion, and the surprisingly enjoyable Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center.

In fact the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center, whose English name makes it sound more boring than New Zealand’s yachting team driving slowly down Wellington’s main streets on a float, is actually really, really interesting, and a great way to physically understand this huge city.

One of the key attractions there is a huge, scale model of Shanghai which you can walk around and over to get a greater idea of one of the most populated cities on the entire globe.

In terms of national significance, you can’t go past Nanjing’s massacre museum, which chronicles the terrible history of Japan’s invasion and murder of hundreds of thousands of citizens.

Back in Shanghai, it’s thrilling to hear that the number of quality museums here are about to increase, with the announcement of a handful of new offerings which will open soon. These include a Shanghai Symphony Music Museum, a Pudong branch of Shanghai Museum, and the Longhua Martyrs Memorial.

Museums truly are grand assets to everything that’s important to our culture, or history, and who we are. This is why I’m so excited that the Shanghai government are enabling more and more of these important monuments to culture to take pride of place in this amazing city.

I can’t wait to go along and learn even more stories that I hope, too, will be stories I never forget.




 

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