NEW YORK, Oct. 17 (Xinhua) -- There are many fresh and exciting areas for museums in China and the United States to cooperate, as the market in China is "huge, diverse and growing," said a senior museum professional here late Thursday.
"One thing I want to be very optimistic, based on my experience, is that Chinese museums are very eager (to cooperate). It's a big market ... I think a lot of museums have inspiration to work with China," said Yiyou Wang, deputy director of Hong Kong Palace Museum, during the 2019 China-U.S. Cultural Investment Forum.
She pointed out that China's museum landscape has been rapidly changing nowadays, thanks to a new generation of museum curators and professionals, who "really have a global perspective."
"What I find really exciting is that when you talk to (the) younger generation of people, they're so open-minded," Wang said. "They're interested in how you do things. They're interested in new models of collaboration."
"They are interested in having the best practices not only in American museums, but worldwide," she added. "I think that Chinese museums will really benefit from having this kind of new leaders."
To make their collaboration more strategic and long-term, Wang called on U.S. museums to devote enough resources to "put China's real focus as a long-term focus."
To reach that goal, she said she hoped their U.S. counterparts could be "on the ground to build long-term relationships at multiple levels in China," and get assistance from experts with deep knowledge of both China and the United States.
For the Chinese part, she urged industry players to better cultivate talents, so as to help Chinese museums to create "more exciting, more accessible and more international projects" and explore more opportunities for Chinese professionals to work in international museums.
"It all comes down to how we actually produce talents," Wang stressed. "We need to encourage and support more Chinese colleagues to come and work on real projects here in America."
In this aspect, she also suggested that Chinese funders not just focus on training Chinese museum professionals in the United States, but also to "really think about how you actually engage international museum colleagues and let them be your spokesperson."
The 2019 China-U.S. Cultural Investment Forum was co-hosted by Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation and Asia Society. The annual event serves as a platform to promote the cultural investment industry of China and the United States.
