Part 1 – Beginning with Shanghai: Overview of Art Museums in Shanghai, Past to Present

There are nearly 40 art museums in Shanghai. Without taking into consideration the History Museum, the Science and Tech Museum, the Urban Planning Museum, and the Natural History Museum, the explosive number of museums dedicated to contemporary art is staggering. If Shanghai residents are having difficulty navigating the wide array of art museums, many of which come with a steep ticket price, how can any visitor to the city make sense of the art scene in Shanghai?

Art Historian Julie Chun has been critically observing, documenting, and publishing articles about the built culture of museums in Shanghai since 2011. In this sit-down lecture and discussion, she will provide a broad overview of the establishment of art museums in our very own city. We will parse the important difference between state and private museums. More importantly, we will examine the notion of "publicness" of art museums and the ways in which the discourse is problematized by its forms of access, or the lack thereof.

The lecture portion of this event will be streamed via Zoom.