Abstract
This paper offers a critical review of the proliferation of mall museums in China. Creating a space incorporating art intervention with the art museum retail concept is known as a synthesis development model, whereby the combination of art and commerce are adopted by real estate enterprises in China. The operational characteristics of mall museums reflect a growing tendency for art to infiltrate everyday life: an aestheticisation of the ordinary. In the late twentieth century, postmodernism placed great emphasis on the blurring of boundaries between art and everyday life, signalling the collapse of the distinction between high art and mass/popular culture (Baudrillard, 1983; Featherstone, 1990). Nonetheless, through the example of the Chi K11 Art Mall, this paper reviews public engagement practices led by the slogan ‘art is for the masses’ within such institutions to explore whether curatorial strategies and art practices are influenced and constantly adapted by ‘art museum retail’. It also aims to discover whether the development of the persuasive space thus has the potential to exclude experimentation and knowledge production. The controversy around the mall museum approach can be understood in terms of the contradictory aims of art museum operators and real estate developers. The author demonstrates that, with the commercialisation of art phenomena in art museums, developers try to establish an artistic intervention space with persuading ambitions to connect with a mass audience. In this ‘persuasive space’ created by real estate developers, the exhibitions, activities and artworks embody the medium of commercialisation of art and the art world.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
The Arts in Social, Political, and Community Life
KEYWORDS
Mall Museum; Real Estate Business, Persuasive Space, Museum Studies
