Zái xíng tǔ mù

Meer over het boek

The exhibition reflects on the role museums play as motors of progress within the socio-political and cultural landscape in China today. It simultaneously presents and enquires into this role, and the associated tasks and aims of museums and cultural spaces, against the backdrop of the global, digital, urban and demographic challenges of the 21st Century, as well as the more locally-specific concerns of heritage and identity. Taking each of sixteen museums as case studies, the exhibition focuses on a set of crucial questions. How is local and national identity defined by the museum design and curation? How does the museum function within the context of its local social and urban environment? Which form or shape was identified as being most suitable for the museum?s function and its context? A bubbling global art market, accompanied by diminishing public support for cultural institutions has created a much?debated increase in public?private partnerships and a growing influence of private patrons in the cultural scene. Conversely, well-funded large institutions relate an increasing need for the representation of their respective cultural identities. Of the sixteen museums on show, fifteen were designed by architects either as new or converted buildings. The additional example, the New Workers Museum in Beijing, grew out of an NGO initiative implemented in a former industrial plant in a village outside of Beijing, and is a remarkable example of architecture created without architects and reflects the urgency to discuss issues of societal identity. 00Exhibition: Aedes Architecture Forum, Berlin, Germany (27.08.-13.10.2016)