To meet the intellectual and cultural needs of the general public who stay at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Museum of China (NMC) has taken action to attract over 61 million viewers to NMC's online exhibitions since the first day of the lunar Year of the Rat. Recently, the NMC Institute of Research, along with NMC's News and Media Department, Data Management and Analysis Center, Social Education Department, has brought its renowned academic exchange program "NMC Lectures" online with a new name "NMC Lecture Picks."
A museum is like a big school. A good school should have high-quality lectures. With a good balance on academic elements, inspirational thinking and artistic features, the "NMC Lecture Picks" aims to carry forward the socialist core values and practice NMC's core values. Mr. Sun Ji, a tenured NMC research fellow, talked about the function of bronze ware "Ying" as an opening lecture for the program. In November 2018, the bronze vessel "Tiger Ying," which had been lost overseas for 158 years, returned to its motherland. In December, it officially entered NMC's collections. In January 2019, it met the public in the NMC exhibition "Tiger Ying: New Era, New Fate." In ancient bronze wares, "Ying" is extremely rare, and "Tiger Ying" is rated as the only-one-of-its-kind bronze treasure. To clarify the specific use of "Tiger Ying," 90-year-old Mr. Sun Ji took the stage in person to give a detailed presentation on the function of "Tiger Ying," offering a first-rate lecture for professionals and the general public.
The "NMC Lectures" is an academic exchange platform of the NMC open to the public. With the purpose of "dual focus on history and art," it has brought together famous experts and scholars at home and abroad to make wonderful speeches on frontier issues and hot academic issues in the fields of history, cultural relics, archaeology, art, etc. It has become an iconic, academic activity series with wide influence. Based on the "NMC Lectures," the "NMC Lecture Picks" selects excellent materials alongside graphic files as an assistance. The lecture materials are reedited: inviting excellent NMC museum guides to add lecture introduction, designing interaction sessions with audience, sound effect editing, multi-channel publicity and promotion, among others. The aim is to draw the audience's attention back to NMC's exhibitions and collections through the wonderful narration by art and cultural heritage masters, thus delivering the program in an academic atmosphere and classroom-like vitality along with more interpretation possibilities on the topics. In this sense, the "NMC Lecture Picks" centers on the bond between the audience and the collections and their viewing experience. Featuring history, culture, the background of the times and the collection of cultural relics, the program fully takes into account the audience's free discretion and flexible timetable to learn more about history and culture online, helps them dig deep into history and historical wisdom, thus further strengthening their cultural confidence.
Lectures in "NMC Lectures" have won the recognition and support of the public for their high academic, thinking and artistic quality, and have played an important role in promoting the socialist core values and practicing NMC's core values. In 2019 alone, 34 lectures were held under "NMC Lectures." The speakers included Sun Ji, Wang Meng, Liu Qingzhu, Yang Zhishui, Wu Weishan and other renowned academic personages, attracting an audience of over 10,000 in total.
Next, the "NMC Lecture Picks" will release more lectures by academic personages such as Wang Meng, Hu Deping, Liu Qingzhu and Yang Zhishui. Please follow our updates.