Learn all about museums in Shanghai from our latest episode, which features a conversation between Public Humanities graduate student Zhuohan (Bella) Jiang and Susan Smulyan, Director of Brown University’s John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage. Zhuohan and Susan discuss why they think museums are particularly popular destinations for the city’s younger populations, how the cultural and economic factors of Shanghai and China are shaping the kinds of museums opening there, and what the uses of WeChat might tell us about visitor engagement here and in other global contexts.
Zhuohan (Bella) Jiang is a first-year Master’s student in Public Humanities at Brown University. She studied culture industry management at Tongji University in Shanghai. Developing much of her museum practice in Shanghai, she wishes to engage in a dialogue that supports innovation, global conversation, and public engagement in arts institutions.
Susan Smulyan is a Professor in the Department of American Studies at Brown University and the Director of the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage. She is the author of Selling Radio: The Commercialization of American Broadcasting and Popular Ideologies: Mass Culture at Mid-Century, and co-editor of Major Problems in American Popular Culture. Most recently she was a Senior Fellow at Fudan University, Shanghai, where she was researching the new museums being built in China.
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Episode 04: Zhuohan Jiang and Susan Smulyan on Shanghai and Museums by Public Work: a public humanities podcast
Learn about museums in Shanghai from our latest episode, which features a conversation between Public Humanities graduate student Zhuohan Jiang and Susan Smulyan, Director of Brown University’s John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage.
Show Notes
“Why Shanghai, China is the Place to be for Contemporary Art” (Jiayang Fan)
“Alternative to Museums: Public and Independent Art Spaces in Shanghai” (Julie Chun; Yishu Vol. 15.6, 2016)
The music on this episode is excerpted from the song “New Day” by Lee Rosevere (licensed via Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International)