Dr WANG Xudong
Director of the Palace Museum
People’s Republic of China
Respectable Mr LAU Kong-wah, Secretary for Home Affairs of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), colleagues and ministers from culture and arts departments, ladies and gentlemen,
Good morning. On behalf of Mr LUO Shugang, Minister of Culture and Tourism of China, it is my great honour and privilege to participate in the ACCF 2019 to meet all the old friends and to make acquaintances with the new ones to enhance our exchange and foster closer co-operation in culture.
According to Chinese President XI Jinping, “cultural confidence” is a more fundamental, extensive, profound and continual strength. We know that the Chinese art, culture and heritage are vital parts of the development of the core values of socialism. The Palace Museum in Beijing has been dedicated to further promoting the cultural heritage and art accumulation of the 5 000-year history and civilisation of China.
The development of the Palace Museum is a miniature of the development of the cultural industry in China. We have been taking advantage of the experience that the Palace Museum had gained in the past 94 years, and working in line with the latest guidelines from the Central Government in terms of culture development and conservation. Here, I would like to share with you the four visions of our future development, namely “the safe and secure Palace Museum”, “the academic Palace Museum”, “the digitised Palace Museum”, and the “dynamic Palace Museum”.
Safety and security are the basis. The building compounds of the Palace Museum have a 600-year history where more than 1.86 million pieces of articles and fine art works are housed. Thus, the preservation of our cultural heritage is the essence. President XI Jinping has granted ample attention to the protection of the Palace Museum, and repeatedly given steer on our safety, security and conservation work. That is to say, we need to better establish a long-term and effective mechanism by technology which enhances the safety and security, and to better optimise our resources so as to mitigate all the risks and protect the Museum and the safety of visitors.
Academic research is the core. In the past many years, the Palace Museum has been nurturing a lot of famous experts and scholars in the research of the relevant cultures in the Museum since it was established. We need to better create an academic research atmosphere among all the scholars and researchers centring the Palace Museum and build an accommodating and open-ended platform in order to better engage with famous academic institutions at home and abroad for deep collaborations. We aim to attract scholars of different disciplines to embark on research on the Palace Museum and its artefacts.
Digitisation gives protection. Embracing the top-notch technologies in a digital era, we need to take advantage of digitisation and high-end technologies for preservation and conservation of culture, which is critical and fundamental to the Palace Museum. We are going to leverage information technologies such as the Internet, big data and also artificial intelligence (AI) to better protect our fundamental data and to demonstrate their culture connotations. Every single detail of the time-honoured buildings and artefacts of the Palace Museum will be digitised and integrated in a unified platform for better technology-oriented protection and conservation and better publicity and propagation of all the knowledge and insights. Such digitisation will greatly support academic research, preventive protection, open management and public education on the Palace Museum.
Dynamism is the root. The fundamental aim of cultural protection work is to better cater to the needs of the increasing spiritual pursuit of all the people in China and in the world. We need to increase the dynamism of the Palace Museum, and transform the humanism embedded in our cultural relics into creative cultural works, digital products, TVs, dramas and publications, and blend traditional culture with our contemporary lives. Schooling is when and where one’s values form; sparking teenagers’ interest in visiting the Palace Museum that increases their insights and awareness towards our culture and art heritage is definitely our responsibility.
Unleashing the vitality of our employees, especially the younger ones, in the Palace Museum is also conducive to creating a “dynamic Palace Museum” because they are the best showcases of its dynamics and the vitality. 70% of our employees are under the age of 40, who are the new blood and fresh momentum for our future developments. We need to better stimulate the vitality and momentum among all those employees and increase their engagement as well. As the mobility of people fosters cultural exchange, we have to work with all the universities, academic institutions and museums at home and abroad, too.
We all know that culture is the crystallisation of wisdom of people of different countries and nations. Although people may have different cultural backgrounds, they share the similar pursuit of a better life. If we appreciate each other’s culture, we may achieve cultural prosperity. I hope that the ACCF 2019 can better promote cultural exchange and lay a solid foundation for the sustainable development for all the human beings. The Palace Museum in Beijing will be more open-minded and more accommodating to better enhance our co-operation with the Belt and Road countries and institutions. We can proceed from the wisdom and crystallisation out of our predecessors to better enhance the people-to-people exchange and foster mutual understanding and respect among different countries, and make our due contribution to the human’s future of a shared destiny.
Last but not least, I welcome you all to visit the Palace Museum in the future.
Thank you.