Eleventh International Conference on The Image

Abstract

Traditionally, if the museums (as agents), want to survive and maintain their institutional raison d’être, they must try to satisfy in an effective way the motivations for which they were thought and created (although logically, these motivations and interests can be modified within the time). Traditionally, the valuable items to be shown were located inside the museums (the building), although with the passage of the time, the value of the architectural container increased in importance and even became of equal or of greater value than what was enclosed within the space. This does not seem an inconsistency if we keep in mind that the Architecture was always treated as one of the seven Fine Arts. That said, this communication will present the hypothesis of a new way of proceeding: that of Chinese “empty ghost museums”. We will present the way in which the motivation that gives rise to the new luxurious museum buildings (and their powerful image) in China, is to get promotions within the national Communist Party (political institution). These “ghost museums” are the result of a political program that has opened thousands of museums in China in the last decade without having the necessary objects or a target audience, becoming, as a consequence, “ghost museums.” We will defend, as a conclusion, that the museum buildings in China are images to be shown (by the different municipalities and village politicians) not by themselves, but with an instrumental purpose that differs of its technical functionality, politics.