Museum mania in China
The Chinese government intends to build 1,000 new museums across the country by 2015. A scary piece by Elizabeth Casale in The Platform, an e-zine on cultural policy, says that China’s “place-based cultural strategy” is leading to a glut of buildings meant to symbolise cultural sophistication. Meanwhile stories are circulating about the Shanghai Grand Theatre often half-empty for lack of interesting programming, or of state-of-the-art equipment that few employees know how to use.
