Wu Zhihua, the curator of the Hong Kong Palace Museum: How is more than 900 cultural relics selected?

On July 3, 2022, the Hong Kong Palace Museum, which has been prepared for several years, was officially opened to the public.

914 precious cultural relics from Beijing Palace Museum attracted thousands of Hong Kong citizens to stop.

How these cultural relics are selected and determined, which has become a question of interest.

"Face -to -face" interview with Wu Zhihua, the curator of the Cultural Museum of the Palace Museum of Hong Kong.

Tell the story behind the cultural relics

Nine exhibition halls, nine themes, and 166 first -class cultural relics in the Palace Museum. Such a large -scale and high -level cultural relics exhibition will be destined to be a cultural event in a city.

Wu Zhihua: When signing the agreement in 2017, we agreed to be no less than 700 cultural relics. Later, of course, according to our theme of our exhibition hall, what cultural relics can tell this story well before it was determined.

Wu Zhihua: I and Dean Shan Xiangxiang and Dean Wang Xudong are all in the museum. The key to tell stories and tell the story behind the cultural relics.

The story of the Forbidden City, which is told by more than nine exhibition halls and more than nine hundred cultural relics, is the story we have ever thought. They can represent the Forbidden City culture and Chinese culture.

The construction

In September 2015, Wu Zhihua, who had served as the deputy director of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government and the Deputy Director of the Cultural Affairs Department, accompanied Lin Zhengyue, the director of the Government Department of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government, to Beijing to participate in the event.

The heavy rain led to the delay of the return flight. When drinking coffee in the Forbidden City, he chatted with the then President of the Palace Museum Shan Xiangxiang. During the meantime, Wu Zhihua first heard the creativity of the Cultural Museum of the Hong Kong Palace Museum for the first time.

Wu Zhihua: When I was chatting with the former dean of the Forbidden City, I was jokingly said whether I could have the Forbidden City in Hong Kong.

When he really met this time, Ms. Lin Zhengyue, the then director of the Minister of Government, was officially proposed. At that time, I did not expect to set up an Forbidden City Cultural Museum in Hong Kong.

Wu Zhihua: I think the establishment of the Hong Kong Palace Museum was not established. It was not established in a period of time. There must be historical reasons and a development process.

The Forbidden City of Beijing is completely different from other institutions. Our cooperation in the past ten years fully reflects that Hong Kong can make important contributions to promoting the culture of the Forbidden City.

Without the support of the central government, the central government cannot do it. When the central government considers this plan, it is very far -sighted. Seeing what role can Hong Kong play in the future development of the country, how can this project of the Hong Kong Palace Museum contribute more to the entire Chinese traditional culture.

In fact, as early as 1998, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government proposed in the governance report of that year to build a series of world -class cultural facilities in the reclamation area in the West Kowloon in Hong Kong to improve Hong Kong's cultural level and world status.

Therefore, after receiving the proposal from the Palace Museum, at the end of 2015, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government submitted a written request to the Central Government to establish the Hong Kong Palace Museum Cultural Museum and obtained approval.

In December 2016, the Hong Kong Palace Museum Cultural Museum project was officially launched.

In 2017, the Hong Kong Palace Museum of Cultural Museum was publicly recruited from the head of the Cultural Expo Global.

At this time, Wu Zhihua's identity is still the deputy director of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government and the Cultural Affairs Department. It is responsible for supervising the cultural related institutions of the department, including 14 public museums, 14 performance art venues, two visual art centers, Hong Kong movies Given and 82 public libraries.

Dong Qian: The curator of the Global Museum of Cultural Museum of the Imperial Palace of Hong Kong. At that time, you were also a member of the application. Is the prerequisite for the application stipulated that the deputy director of the government's recreational music and the Cultural Affairs Department could not apply?

Wu Zhihua: I want to resign, leave my job for thirty years, and leave my team that has worked together for thirty years. This decision is not easy.

I was 57 years old and I worked in the government all my life. There was no one in this museum. From my first, everyone had to recruit. This was a great challenge for a 57 -year -old person.

But at this time I think it may be that history asked me to bear this responsibility and seize this opportunity.

The recruitment team believes that Wu Zhihua has a wide range of vision, has a deep understanding of the cultural environment tradition and Chinese history and culture, and is an appropriate candidate.

In 2019, Wu Zhihua officially served as the first curator of the Hong Kong Palace Museum. It was also in this year that the Hong Kong Palace Museum officially began construction.

The museum is located in the Western Kowloon Cultural Area, which is the core area of ​​Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong, which is gold.

In terms of funds, the Hong Kong Jockey Club donated 3.5 billion Hong Kong dollars to fund the design, construction and preparation exhibitions of the Hong Kong Palace Museum.

But Wu Zhihua's biggest effort was the recruitment of personnel.

Wu Zhihua: We have a total of 80 employees, which are step -by -step in the past three years. Everyone picks it up by myself.

The team is very critical, how to find some people who have the ability and knowledge level.

I have the most important thing. I do n’t want people without ideals. This ideal is to have a common concept with the development of the Hong Kong Palace Museum.

Dong Qian: Why do you think of your ideals so important?

Wu Zhihua: Maybe I read history. I feel that promoting history is not technology and value. I think we must have their own ideals and goals to build this restaurant.

After I was the curator, I spent a while to think about how this museum should do. This museum is not only a museum in Hong Kong, but also the museum of the world. It is a museum that promotes Chinese art and culture.

How to choose the cultural relics?

At the end of 2021, the engineering museum of the Hong Kong Palace Museum was completed. In the first half of 2022, more than 900 cultural relics of the Palace Museum in Beijing arrived in Hong Kong. How these cultural relics were selected and determined, which became a question of interest. Wu Zhihua: We are completely autonomous. The entire team and the Forbidden City are a brothers' hall. We have opinions between our brothers. Our brother is very respectful to our brother.

All themes are we proposed that the Hong Kong team took the plan first and then discussed with the Forbidden City experts, so the results of the entire exhibition were the results of the cooperation between the two teams.

In this exhibition, a cultural relic was named Wu Zhihua. It must be brought to the Cultural Museum of the Palace Museum of Hong Kong, which is the box of the cultural relics of cultural relics to move south.

After the September 18th Incident, the Japanese invaders swallowed the northeast and looked at North China. The cultural relics of the Forbidden City were in danger. There is always a day of revival, and cultural relics will never be recovered.

In order to protect these precious heritage, in 1933, 19,557 boxes of cultural relics of the Palace Museum and other units were relocated to the south. After 20 years of tens of thousands of kilometers, more than one million cultural relics were damaged, which became a miracle in the history of the protection of human cultural heritage.

Wu Zhihua: This is my suggestion. I don't want the audience to come to see treasures. The audience comes to understand the development history of the Forbidden City, especially the history of the cultural relics of the Forbidden City. This is the most difficult time for the Chinese nation to save our entire culture.

According to reports, there will be a certain number of Forbidden City cultural relics in the Hong Kong Palace Museum for a long time in the future. If you add a temporary exhibition, there will be a thousand -piece cultural relics with a thousand sets of the Palace Museum to meet with Hong Kong citizens.

The museum will also replace the exhibition cultural relics regularly, often new. This will make the young Hong Kong Forbidden City Cultural Museum expected in the future.

Source: CCTV News Client

- END -