In Part 4 of a series on how Hong Kong’s new and forthcoming museums stack up against their counterparts on the Chinese mainland, Chitralekha Basu looks at the ways in which museums have been trying to build sustained relationships with their audiences and recruit new ones in the time of COVID-19. 

Before going to see a piece of art, young people signing up for Art on Purpose — conducted art appreciation classes get to stock up on background information.   (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Museums exist in the periphery of popular imagination. And this has little to do with the fact that they were closed to the public for the better part of 2020. 

Hong Kong Museum of Art, the city’s first public museum, was founded in 1962. While not enough time has lapsed since then for an evolved museum-going culture to materialize, Hong Kong museums must now compete with a range of leisure facilities offering instant gratification. The bigger hurdle of course is that many  people in Hong Kong are not convinced that museums are for them.  

Heiman Ng, who runs Art on Purpose, an art education outfit helping young people to develop a critical eye, feels the general lack of interest might be the result of a communication gap between the city’s museums and their target groups. 

“At the heart of the problem is an institutional inability to define in simple terms what art actually is for and why it should matter so much in this digital and complicated world,” says Ng, disappointed with the general lack of imagination and curatorial laziness on display. 

“In most art museums, shows are laid out chronologically, as if the most important thing about works of art is when they were made, rather than the psychological impact and/or the social implications they may have,” Ng says. “Museums should curate art in ways that link them powerfully to our inner needs,” he adds.

Art on Purpose Director Heiman Ng believes museums should curate art in ways that link them powerfully to human needs. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Those in charge of Hong Kong’s future museums understand this and are trying to chart out a more contemporary and cutting-edge curatorial path that local audiences can relate to. 

“We will adopt a modern-day, cross-disciplinary approach, bringing traditional art and culture into people’s lives in the present,” says the Hong Kong Palace Museum Director Louis Ng, who is relying on the power of objects to draw newer audiences to the treasures that once belonged to Chinese royalty. “Every object on show will come with a story, about its owner, or maker. I think people like to listen to stories.”

Heiman Ng too is trying to do his bit toward helping museums create new audiences. When the pandemic-related restrictions are lifted and HKMoA reopens, he will lead groups of six-to-15-year-olds on a guided tour of paintings from the Italian Renaissance, on loan from the Uffizi Galleries in Florence. The young people who sign up for the tour will attend zoom classes to stock up on background information before they get to see the paintings in real life. 

Young art enthusiasts have their first brush with the idea of design thinking at a guided tour of the V&A Gallery in Design Society Museum, Shenzhen.  (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Online and on-site combo

Increasingly, a hybrid of online and on-site programing is beginning to look like a viable option for museums. Adopted to keep in touch with museum audiences in the time of coronavirus-triggered restrictions on physical access, the combination model looks all set to outlast the pandemic.

Keen to carry on with its people-oriented approach, Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textiles was one of the first Hong Kong museums to jump on the online bandwagon, aligning with the #MuseumFromHome worldwide campaign to give its audience online access to exhibitions, guided tours and artist talks. At the same time, CHAT continued to host workshops in the physical space, albeit on a socially-distanced mode. Armed with masks and hand sanitizers, community members came together on the museum’s courtyard, to sew recycled clothing on to suitcase-shape frames, in order to complete a large-scale installation for the Beijing-based artist Yin Xiuzhen’s exhibition, Sky Patch. 

“Throughout our community projects, we were transparent in informing visitors and participants about the regulations, giving them a sense of security,” says Mizuki Takahashi, CHAT’s executive director and chief curator. “As the pandemic persisted and progressed, we regularly monitored the situation. When it got more serious, we responded by adjusting our programs, whether by introducing extra precautionary measures, or switching to an online format.”

Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textiles has hosted hands-on tactile workshops for the visually-impaired, says executive director, Mizuki Takahashi. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

M+ was quick to react to the exigencies of the pandemic as well. Besides adding to its already rather substantial online open data source, M+ Collections Beta, and uploading virtual tours of exhibitions and talks with artists like Shirley Tse, the museum launched a new online series called How Did You Two Meet?, where curators pick two unrelated pieces of art from the museum’s collection and try to find a connection. M+ Rover, a traveling studio that would earlier visit schools and community centers in Hong Kong, trying to stir and stimulate people’s artistic sensibilities by inviting them to participate in various activities, reappeared in an online avatar. 

“Many of these things have been so successful that it’s very clear they will continue regardless of the museum’s physical presence,” says M+ museum director Suhanya Raffel, adding that the museum’s online programs managed to connect with 45,455 young people. 

Hong Kong Museum of Art has developed a slew of programs in which young visitors can participate. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

For the differently-abled

It might still take a while before museums find ways of reaching out to the digitally-impoverished sections of society though. However, both HKMoA and CHAT have included physically and socially-disadvantaged groups in their programing. 

In 2019, CHAT’s visiting artist Choi Taeyoon worked with visually-impaired students at the Ebenezer School. “Over several hands-on tactile workshops, we guided the students in exploring and understanding the connection between textile and the internet,” says Takahashi. “We’ve also produced a series of docent videos of our heritage-based exhibition, Welcome to the Spinning Factory!, with audio description, sign language and accessible captions.”

Hong Kong Museum of Art’s collaboration with Arts with the Disabled Association Hong Kong has helped visually-impaired people have access to museum collections. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

HKMoA has a long-sustained tradition of trying to give the underprivileged and differently-abled people access to museum collections. The museum’s summer art camps, sponsored by Friends of Hong Kong Museum of Art, have been running for the past 12 years.  

“Each year we select or work with one specific underprivileged group,” says HKMoA director Maria Mok. “It could be autistic children, families with low income, and so on.” She mentions the Accessible Art at HKMoA program, sponsored by the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, and the museum’s collaboration with Arts with the Disabled Association Hong Kong, saying, “The program provides a range of materials people with special needs can use.” 

The exhibitions in three of HKMoA’s galleries come with audio description, Braille description and sign-language videos. “So we have been very active and engaged in these types of partnerships,” Mok says.      

Hong Kong Museum of Art has a sustained tradition of welcoming   differently-abled visitors, says museum  director Maria Mok. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Socializing a generation

Nicole Ching, the co-founder of Museum 2050, believes some of the private museums in China’s Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area are doing an exemplary job of recruiting new audiences from a culture where not many people go to museums as a matter of habit. 

“We have seen the capacity of so many private museums to socialize a whole new generation, namely this burgeoning middle class, into developing a voracious cultural appetite and passion for contemporary art,” says Ching, speaking from the experience of running a platform that studies the cultural and social impacts of the museum boom in China in the last decade, up close.  She perceives “a need to be cultivated,” which China’s new museums are tapping into by soliciting “wider audience engagement, as well as playing a major role in satisfying that demand.” 

Nicole Ching (right), co-founder, Museum 2050, says China’s new museums have successfully tapped into people’s “need to be cultivated”. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

For instance, He Art Museum in Shunde, Foshan is trying to expand their audience base by taking cues from the area’s distinctive food culture. 

“The participating artists transform this indispensable sustenance into a creative resource, build a metaphorical canteen in the exhibition space for communicating the deeper themes of cooking, and trace the food-related memories about life based on the traditional diet and cultural experience from different countries and ethnic groups. Food art re-interprets the basis of our existence and extends it to the realm of material culture,” says HEM Director Shao Shu, explaining the idea behind the Mundane Canteen section of the museum’s inaugural exhibition, From the Mundane World, which runs until March 31, 2021. “It is formed through experiences of cooking, consuming, desire, and the diverse eating cultures of the artists and audiences, drawing attention to the symbiotic relationship between our living environment and our food systems,” he adds. 

The original plan was to involve more artists as well participatory programs involving a bigger audience, which had to be curtailed because of pandemic-related constraints, Shao says. “We are planning to show those works that cannot be transported or made on-site through videos, photos as well as literature.” 

Detail from Kitchen, installation by Song Dong, from the Mundane Canteen exhibition now on at Foshan’s He Art Museum. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Sharing learning resources

Hong Kong’s upcoming museums, M+ which opens in 2021, and HKPM a year later, too are understandably keen to develop an USP and a brand identity that will strike a chord with casual onlookers and eventually succeed in indoctrinating them into loyal friends.

“We have done a lot of thinking about what a Hong Kong audience looks like. And we’re aware that Hong Kong has not necessarily developed an informed museum-going audience. So we have been doing a lot of work by going to people in order to start building an understanding about those people coming to us when we’re ready,” says Raffel of M+. 

Both HKPM and M+ are looking forward to making a contribution to the city’s education sector, especially Hong Kong schools which, Raffel points out, “do not include art histories or design histories.” 

“We can say (to the schools), use our resources. Let the museum give you another perspective on history. This is another essential part of building an audience base in Hong Kong,” says Raffel who believes M+ is uniquely placed to play such a role. 

Contact the writer at basu@chinadailyhk.com

To read a Q&A with Maria Mok, director, Hong Kong Museum of Art, please click on: https://bit.ly/37WoEf9