Rendering №3

The article “Life on the South China Sea” was published on February 12, 2013 in “The Art Newsparer”. It discusses Hong Kong’s maritime museum, which is going to be reopened on a pier in Victoria Harbour. The author,  Alexandra Seno, makes clear that Hong Kong’s museum-in-the-making of contemporary visual culture, attracts international attention, a museum that tells the history of the port city’s rise to global importance is due to reopen on 26 February. It is an open secret that The Hong Kong Maritime Museum is moving to a three-storey pier in the city’s central business district. The space will boast coveted views of Victoria Harbour and, at 35,000 sq. ft, will be six times bigger than the museum’s previous home, a colonial building in Stanley, a suburb of Hong Kong. It is necessary to mention that one of the highlights of the museum, which was founded in 2003, is an exhibition created around Pacifying the South China Sea, a rare and highly detailed Qing Dynasty scroll. It happens because historians consider the event vital to the Qing Dynasty’s ability to exercise power in the early 19th century.

It is pointed out that the work was acquired by the museum from a French family’s collection in 2006. It was made by an unknown artist in the early 1800s, around the time of the campaign. Analyzing the situation it becomes clear that other galleries will shed light on Hong Kong’s history as a world maritime capital, the evolution of seafaring life through the centuries, and the development of China’s export trade in ceramics and other coastal-based trades and industries. Anthony Hardy says that the museum also plans to bring at least two major exhibitions from world-class collections to Hong Kong in 2013. There are sighed that the new space will include 13 permanent galleries, two spaces for visiting exhibitions, a cafe and two shops. Representatives estimate that the museum, with its new, more convenient location and larger floor plan, can attract at least 140,000 visitors in its first year—more than triple the number it drew in Stanley.

In conclusion the author mentions that although the museum has the backing of the government, it is a privately run institution, and will be financed primarily by funding from the local shipping industry. Hardy, who is a collector, was the chairman of the Wallem Group shipping company until 2006, when he retired and focused his energy on the maritime museum. As for my opinion, I think that it is good decision to reconstruct the museum because it will help it to hold people’s attention and become more popular museum than now.