The reason most people do not like going to the museum is that "in China a museum looks like a giant opening textbook, which obviously bores audiences from both home and abroad," said Zhang Jie, deputy chief of the Department of Display Design at the Capital Museum in Beijing
The key problem was presentation, said Zhang.

"We have the techniques or equipment at the same level as the West, but a massive difference in mindset, in skills such as exhibiting or curating."

In other countries, said a Canadian expat working in Beijing who asked not to mention her name, organizers "want it to be an enjoyable learning experience, so they try to make it as interesting and accessible as possible."


The National Art Museum of China and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. With only 100 years of history, museums in China need improvement, especially in their presentation skills. (Photo: CFP)
"I haven't been to many museums, but the presentation of some of the exhibits is boring.
"So, yes, presentation is very important."

Most museums in China end up simply decking out the exhibition halls rather than actually designing displays for them, said Zhang, 30, who has worked for Capital Museum for more than five years.

"Even at the very initial stage of outlining the exhibition, museums have no mind to let the audience interact with the exhibits," he said.

"When using media to design the exhibition, their only concept is a touch screen image where audiences feel no psychological interaction."

In contrast with the stagnant propagandistic method of depicting massacres through photos, graphs or diagrams with bombastic dates and numbers of victims, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC instead offers a bridge to all visitors who enter the exhibition, Zhang said.

On both sides of the bridge are various shoes and boots. The audience in this fresh way might wonder what happened to the owners of the shoes, who most likely removed them just a few minutes before being gassed to death.

"It shocks the heart. No need to illustrate by word how cruel the Nazis were and numbers can be forgotten. But this deep impression conveys the meaning of this exhibition."
Museums in China need clear goals, said Song Xinchao, chief director of the Museum and Social Cultural Heritage Department at the State Administration of Cultural Heritage. China's museums had about 100 years of history.

"We only actually developed museums as civil-cultural organizations in the latter stages of China's opening-up and reform of the last 20 years.

"To China, the concept of a museum was really imported 100 years ago. Compared to Western museums' development that dates back to the 1680s, we need more time to honor our own commitment."

Song said Chinese museums still have a long way to go, but are at least headed in the right general direction.

That's small comfort for unlucky visitors to domestic museums, especially those foreign visitors more accustomed to minimum international standards.

"Chinese museums are all infected by the same dreary idea that crucifies individual creativity. They take exciting facts and crush them into one big boring explanation of everything," said a British expat who had lived in China for 10 years, and who asked not to be named.

"I hate seeing which identical leader opened the museum, the exact number of square meters or a bronze ash tray that proves beyond all doubt that China is so very, very great.
"They just go on and on in that monotonous tone which reminds me of the man who arrives at a fun party and everyone suddenly goes quiet."

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