【新闻】2025年“5・18国际博物馆日”湖南主会场活动在益阳举行
2025 “5.18 International Museum Day” Main Venue in Hunan event was held in Yiyang, Hunan Province from May 14 to 16. Themed “The Future of Museums in Rapidly Changing Communities”, this event embraced a series of wonderful activities, host by the Cultural Heritage of Hunan and the People’s Government of Yiyang Municipality, undertaken by the Hunan Society of Museums, Yiyang Municipal Bureau of Culture, Broadcast-TV and Tourism, and implemented by Yiyang Municipal Museum.
During the opening ceremony, Deng Shuguang, deputy mayor of the People’s Government of Yiyang Municipality, introduced the distinctive advantage of Yiyang as a famous historic and cultural city. Jiang Meng, member of the Leading Party Member’s Group of Hunan Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism and director of the Cultural Heritage of Hunan, emphasized that Hunan, as a major province of cultural relics, was actively promoting systematic reform in both provincial and municipal museums, making efforts to write a “Hunan paper” of the future of museums. An Laishun, president of International Council of Museums Asia-Pacific Alliance (ICOM-ASPAC) and vice president of Chinese Museums Association, fully affirmed the development achievements of Hunan cultural heritage and museums, and expected that Hunan would further advance the communication and cooperation with international communities, and better tell China’s and Hunan’s stories.
The opening ceremony of 2025 “5.18 International Museum Day” Main Venue in Hunan
At the event, the Hunan Society of Museums signed a cooperation framework agreement with the Society of Beijing Museums, aiming to enhance cooperation in future exhibition exchanges and talent development, advancing sharing and innovation of cultural heritage and museums resources.
The Hunan Society of Museums signed a cooperation framework agreement with the Society of
The highlights and achievements of the provincial cultural heritage and museums sector in 2023 and 2024 were announced during the opening ceremony. The list of the first 39 countryside museums in Hunan were officially published, including Huang Ziyuan Calligraphy Museum in Anhua, Chinese Fireworks Cultural Museum in Liuyang and Chinese Contemporary Writer Signed Books Museum in Qingxi Village, Yiyang City. In addition, 2021-2024 “Fine Exhibits” and “Top 10 Best Education Cases” of Hunan Museum were unveiled, which included 10 “Fine Exhibit Award” and 11 “Excellent Exhibit Award”, as well as 10 “Best Education Cases” and 11 “Excellent Education Cases”. “Hearing and Seeing Huxiang – the Exhibition of Hunan Musical Relics” sent from Hunan Museum was awarded “Fine Exhibit Award”, and “‘Han Culture in Campus’ Demonstration Project” was selected into “Top 10 Best Education Cases”, fully embodying our achievements made in exhibition planning and public education service in recent years.
2021-2024 Hunan Museum Fine Exhibits and selected Fine Exhibit Awards
2021-2024 Hunan Museum Top 10 Best Education Cases and selected 10 best cases
At the opening ceremony, Hunan Museums Development Report 2023-2024 was formally released. By the end of 2024, there had been 200 registered museums in Hunan Province, with 53 national first-level, second-level and third-level museums and over 2 million pieces or sets of collections. During 2023 and 2024, the museums in Hunan Province held a total of 1,852 exhibitions and 38,720 social education activities, carried out 273 scientific researches and handled 146 million visits. In recent years, all the museums in the province continued to improving their functions on research, collection, protection, demonstration and education, showing vigorous momentum of development.
After the opening ceremony, a series of activities of 2025 “5.18 International Museum Day” Main Venue in Hunan accordingly unfold. As the organizer of this event and attached institution of the Secretariat of the Hunan Society of Museums, Hunan Museum was deeply involved in the whole planning process, organization and implementation, making excellent cultural resources directly accessible to the community level from three main aspects — “public-benefit culture, creativity empowerment and technology integration” — so that the public could enjoy a diverse cultural experience. The cultural creations and intangible heritage market in Yiyang Municipal Museum gathered over 30 featured booths where intangible heritage skills including Hunan embroidery and Qian Liang Tea, a black tea originating in Hunan, were displayed together with creative products of cultural heritage and museums. At the interactive zone, visitors could have hands-on experience, enjoying the unique charm of traditional culture. As the creative benchmark of the museums in Hunan, the Cultural and Creative Research Center of Hunan Museum selected 32 kinds of five themes cultural and creative products as exhibits, from Mawangdui silk texts to ancient polygonal bronze mirrors with patterns, the rich Hunan cultural deposits of which attracted visitors to stop and select. At a public welfare activity of appraising cultural relics named “Appraising Ancient Treasures and Inheriting in Museums”, the experts of the Cultural Relics Collection and Appraisal Center of Hunan Museum provided free appraisal service for over 200 family heirlooms for the local residents; meanwhile, we also promoted knowledge about the protection of cultural relics and to deeply engrain the concept into public’s mind, more than 1,000 brochures were distributed on the scene. As night fell, “Night at the Museum” broke the boundaries of time and space through creative performances. A sitcom called If Cultural Relics could talk built an immersive cultural experience where several cultural relics such as Neolithic stone axes and wooden figurines during the Warring States Period came to life through humorous lines. Thousands of visitors came to participate in the activity, jointly witnessing Hunan Museum transforming and upgrading from static exhibition to a new “perceivable and participable” cultural and tourist landmark.
The scene of the public welfare treasure appraisal activity
The exhibition of the cultural and creative products from Hunan Museum
Night at the Museum
At the specialized academic seminar, experts and scholars from around the country carried out in-depth discussions around the theme “The Development Strategy towards the Museum of the Future” and three sub-themes “Technological Change and Museum Innovation”, “ Youth and Museum Vitality” and “Museums, Cultural and Tourists Industry and Urban-Rural Development”, focusing on the innovation of museums in the digital and intelligent era, the education model from the perspective of the new generation, and integrated urban-rural development empowered by museum industry. Chen Xuliang, deputy Party secretary of Hunan Museum and president of the Hunan Society of Museums, first delivered a speech themed “Civilization Genes in the Digital Wave—Cultural Transmission and Innovation of Hunan Museum in the New Media Era” at the session “Technological Change and Museum Innovation”, systematically elaborating the Hunan practice in cultural transmission empowered by digital technology. Wang Yifei, director of the Scientific Research Office of Hunan Museum, and He Ye, director of the Data Center also participated in this roundtable discussion, exploring the innovation paradigm of protection and using of cultural relics in this digitally driven era by citing the case of Smart Museum building of Hunan Museum. In the session “Youth and Museum Vitality”, Li Xizi, director of the Education Center, shared the experience of conducting excellent educational programs, and demonstrated to all the peers across the country “Hunan Plan” which converged technological innovation of museums and youth power through multiple dimensions of ideas exchange and communications, offering in-depth thinking and cutting-edge ideas for the high-quality development of museum industry.
The main session of the academic seminar: The Development Strategy towards the Museum of the Future
Chen Xuliang, deputy Party secretary of Hunan Museum and president of the Hunan Society of Museums, delivered a keynote speech at the session “Technological Change and Museum Innovation”
Session One of the academic seminar: Technological Change and Museum Innovation
Session Two of the academic seminar: Youth and Museum Vitality
As a global cultural meeting, “5.18 International Museum Day” marked a significant festival in the museum industry. The main venue in Hunan not only concentratedly displayed the achievements of the development of the cultural heritage and museums across the province, but also mobilized the participants for the future of museums. Hunan always bore in mind that we must “exploring the effective mechanism for cultural and technological integration” and “promoting in-depth integration of culture and tourism” put forward by the General Secretary Xi Jinping during the inspection tour in Hunan Province, taking the reform of “coordinated provincial and municipal” museum system as the grip, enhancing the support of digital and intelligent technology for the industry’s development and motivating the fresh energy of cultural heritage and museums at the primary level.
As “5.18 International Museum Day” Main Venue in Hunan successfully concluded, the workers in the cultural heritage and museums sector would embrace the future with open arms, and continue to writing a new chapter of “bring cultural relics to live” in this rapidly changing society, sustaining the civilization memory to be passed on in the course of innovation.
The group photo of 2025 “5.18 International Museum Day” Main Venue in Hunan
