An exhibition on Master Hong Yi and Wenzhou is held at the Yanyuan Art Museum. [Photo/WeChat account: zhejiangxuanchuan]
Private collectors in Wenzhou, East China's Zhejiang province, have been sharing cultural relics with the public, bringing cultural treasures to life, and working to preserve them in recent years.
Many private collectors established museums.
As early as 1989, a revolutionary museum funded by private capital was built in Zhaopingyang village, Rui'an city, Wenzhou, becoming one of the first private museums in the province.
By the end of 2021, a total of 58 private museums had registered in Wenzhou, including the dendrobium officinale museum in Yueqing city, the folk museum in Longwan district, and the shell carving museum in Dongtou district.
Wenzhou has set a goal of building itself into a city of private museums and has been improving their development patterns. Their efforts include exploring a sustainable business model through cultural creation, patent commercialization, and collection rentals, and setting up an integrated online and offline trading system that includes exhibition, collection, appraisal, auction, financing, and artwork consumption.
These innovative practices have strengthened the preservation and utilization of cultural relics and promoted the creative transformation and development of traditional culture.
For example, the Yanyuan Art Museum, which was founded five years ago, has collaborated with the Wenzhou Museum, Wenzhou Art Museum, and Zhejiang University to hold nearly 20 exhibitions, which helped break cultural barriers and promote time-honored local cultural deposits and figures.
Cultural relics cannot 'sleep' in warehouses without dignity. Only when they are available to the public can they truly come to life and shine. This is according to Shan Jixiang, former director of the Palace Museum, and private collectors from Wenzhou have heeded his words.
