There is a stereotype that museums are stuffy, stationary places where artifacts are stored in a glass cabinets and exhibitions are displayed in the halls, but an exhibit titled "Son of Heaven in his Heyday: Exhibition of the Qianlong Emperor of the Qing Dynasty" at the Zhejiang Provincial Museum in Hangzhou has broken with such a notion. The exhibition has won praise from the national news portal Guangming Daily which has said that the exhibition makes the museum "move."
A "moving" museum is one where exhibitions no longer stick to traditional formats, namely being on show in a fixed space; instead, such museums develop digital galleries to publicize their collections online or engage in exhibition exchanges around the country.
Shan Jixiang, director of the Palace Museum, supports such "moving" exhibitions, and noted that the best criterion to determine how good a museum is would be to examine how much of a cultural influence it can have on people’s daily lives.
Modern museums can be considered educational organizations that transmit traditional cultural resources and knowledge to society and the public. The main value of a museum is not only in the quality of its collection and research efforts, but also in that of its knowledge dissemination, the Guangming Daily article added.
According to the article, the Zhejiang exhibit is the most comprehensive display so far of Qianlong, with 168 pieces from the Palace Museum in Beijing and the rest from the Zhejiang Provincial Museum.
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