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| The Dialogue about art museums |
| By Peng Lai |
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 i Xiangyang, 53 years old, published his book "I Have Loved This Job" in last November. As a former director of Shanghai Art Museum from 1994 to 2006, it seems he has a lot of words about the road of Shanghai Art Museum and he went together.
In the beginning of 2007, Peng Lai from ArtZineChina.com interviewed him at his new office. After he left museum, he was appointed as the president of Shanghai Oil Painting & sculpture College. Even he already wrote a book about museum, but we can still find his fresh and frank ideas in the following interview:
 Q: What do you think about non-profit art museums?
A: Real art museums all aim to be non-profit. Art museums are the last step in trying to present art work and should not be about buying in or selling out. However, non-profit does not mean that there is no operation because it can also create art works by collecting, exhibiting, and ticketing while some better museums even have their own publishers, schools, and art reproduction factories and so on. The key is that the money they make does not go into any individual's pocket, but facilitates the future of the art museum. Many museums in China have the practice of charging for exhibition space. Unfortunately this does not conform to the international rule of a non-profit.
Q: Some art museums charge rent for space to host exhibitions and even subsidizes staff salaries. When is this situation going to be resolved?
A: Collection and operation funds are the basic necessities for the existence of art museums. Now, most local governments have the policy of allocating funds to shortfall rather than allocating funds in full and so financial security is a problem. On the other hand, in China sponsors cannot receive the benefit of philanthropy, as in the rest of the world. Therefore, sponsoring an art show or making a donation does not result in a tax break and this limits about ability to attract donors and sponsors.
Q: In your opinion, what kind of direction do you think Shanghai Art Museum is taking in its collection of art works?
A: When I first worked at the Shanghai Art Museum, its collection had fewer than 2,000 pieces, most of which were paintings. It had 9,000 pieces by the time I left there. The main direction of the Shanghai Art Museum's collection is Contemporary Art. Of course, the concept of the modern time we discussed included the concept of time, as well as its connotation of the contemporary; it’s the balance between these two areas. We started with oil painting in the beginning, because the early Chinese oil paintings were represented by Shanghai. We received a lot of oil paintings. In addition, we have the collections in combination with exhibitions, especially in our two-year exhibition displaying oil painting, sculpture, or some works of modern new media.
Q: How are these works displayed? The exhibition of permanent collections in Shanghai Art Museums seems intermittent.
A: We regularly have our exhibitions on the first and second floor and we have also wanted to introduce long term exhibitions in our museum. Exhibitions should regularly have some related themes in combination with the features of their collections, which should combine the research of their collections and the location of their functions. They should have a systematic plan. In fact because of limits from administrative and economic conditions, we usually could not possibly express our own complete intentions for the exhibitions. In addition, the acceptance level of the public to those exhibitions is not always optimistic. In the first year after we moved to a new museum, we displayed some "treasures," such as works by Xu Beihong, and Zhang Daqian, great master works, but the effort spent on creating the exhibition was not returned in the acceptance level of the public and visitor numbers were not as high as expected.
 Q: The exhibition has been embarrassing to the museum, on one hand, it has something to do with the public interest. On the other hand, does it have a lot to do with the publicity, introduction or the museum’s marketing plan?
A: Yes. The art museum should be the channel of communication between the public and art. A museum should benefit the public. A museum should have a detailed public relations plan, and work on daily promotion and education. For this point, Shanghai Art Museum established the Ministry of Education in 2000, which will carry out this function.
Q: There are so many places where people disagree on constructing museums with huge funds, either public, or private. What do you think of this?
A: To some extent, many public art museums are still under government administration control and they are just achievement projects. No unified industry standards or assessment systems and there are no business standards of operation either because they do not understand the concept of art museums. And so it's difficult to enjoy the government's preferential policies, nor is it clear what obligations museums should have. Therefore, there has been a situation that once new art museums are established by the government, its layout, style, direction of collections, plans of exhibitions and academic team are far behind. Of course, the situation has been much better in recent years, and many local governments have clearly defined art museums as the same as libraries and museums in that they are all cultural facilites built for the public.
Q: So as a cultural facility for public profit, what basic conditions should the art museums have?
 A: This will go back to your last question, the art museums in an ideal sense should have the following factors: non-profit set up, a fixed location, a certain scale of collections, long-term displays and no space rentals. In addition to the expenditure of daily operation, sufficient funding guarantees that every year the museum should be able to manage its collections and exhibitions. Besides, the museum should also have annual exhibition plans and detailed operation plans. They should create public enjoyment, just like in bookstores, art shows and some relaxing places. According to that standard, there isn’t one real art museum in China. The government does not give them any guarantee of funds so many art museums have to charge space rentals to survive. You can not even talk about communication with the public, or introduce art appreciation to the public. Of course, it has been different in the past few years. Shanghai Art Museums and Guangdong Art Museum have had their own series of exhibitions. As the leader in art museums, China Art Museum has been insisting to hold its own exhibitions for it has the superiority for obtaining collections.
Q: The art museums in China are still in a period of starting up apparently, very different from foreign countries. Does the development level of art museums have anything to do with economic level and the construction of culture? For instance, in the economically developed areas next to the sea, art museums are quite concentrated.
A: Sort of, but now I feel it does not just have something to do with the economic and culture, but also the way of living in China. Westerners grow up in museums, our nation has a different habit of living. 
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