After visiting several museums in other countries, I started to do research in Hong Kong. I have taken photos and interviewed with ordinary visitors inside those museums. I thought of perhaps I can interview professionals also in order to enrich my data of the project. With the help of my advisor, Harald, I can luckily arrange 6 interviews in total, with both local and foreign professionals in curation. Interviewees are listed below:
- Dr. Florian Knothe, Director of HKU Museum
- Dr. Isaac Leung, Chairperson of Videotage
- Mr. Tobias Berger, Head of Arts in Tai Kwun Contemporary
- Ms. Stella Fong, Lead Curator of Learning and Interpretation in M+
- Mr. Enoch Cheng, Founder of Art Collective Interlocutor
- Mr. Kyle Chung, Senior Research Associate of Centre for Applied Computing and Interactive Media
The interview is supposed to be within 20 minutes. Questions are framed within 4 different categories related to curatorial practice, visitors, personal experience and museum. Proposed questions are as followed:
- Curation Strategies
- How to curate a show that attract people?
- What is the trend of curatorial strategies in the recent year?
- How can you, as a curator, help visitors to get to know the content of exhibition when they are lack of professional knowledge?
- Visitors’ Behaviour
- 3 Keywords that would pop up in your mind when mentioning “visitor”
- How would you comment on the behavior of visitors nowadays and in the past?
- Would you mind if visitors only come to the exhibition for taking pictures only? Why?
- Do you think the nowadays technology affects the behavior of visitors? How is the change? Any comment?
- Experience
- Can you share a good/bad experience you have when visiting art museums?
- What is art museum meant to you?
- What is your expectation when you visit other museums?
- What is your criteria on choosing a museum to visit?
- Museum and Future
- What will be the role of art museum towards the society in the future?
- How will the changed (participative) role of visitor influence the art museum in the future?
- How will the curatorial strategies change in the future?
- What will be the role / impact/ influence of media technology for the museum in the future?
- Can museum be digitalized and exist as a virtual museum only, when people mostly rely on digital devices nowadays?
The interviews are successfully carried during late February to the mid of March. However, due to the limited time, not every question on the list has been mentioned during the interview. Some add-on questions have been added during the interview according to the individuals’ background and experience.
Full transcript of the interviews can be viewed on request, since I have promised the interviewers that the content of the interview would not be published online and keeps confidential. Beside, analysis and comparison of the result will be included in the coming theoretical text.
The Museum Project 