Eleventh International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

Museums provide a wide variety of historical and cultural experiences, showing diverse artworks and artifacts to the public. Major roles of museums are making museum visitors connected with and enhancing their curiosity for various cultures. Museums should allow visitors to interact with artworks and artifacts in a culturally diverse setting and encourage the participation of various population groups across culture, age, sex, religion, and national origin. For the purposes aforementioned, I assumed, contemporary art from other cultures would significantly contribute to the attraction of local visitors to the collections from other cultures. Unlike traditional art, contemporary art shares a common theme of popular culture in our society. My questions are whether contemporary Asian art is more familiar with and more interesting to U.S. visitors than traditional Asian art and what kind of meaning and importance contemporary Asian art has to the local U.S. visitors. I selected the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston for this study. This study finds out how a museum can be transformed as for a local community into a culturally diverse learning place across various population groups and how effectively a contemporary Asian art creates and facilitates visitors’ cultural experiences. Finally, I will suggest how museums can collaborate to provide visitors with rich, interactive, and experimental environments.