Episode 04: Zhuohan Jiang and Susan Smulyan on Museums and Shanghai

Susan Smulyan and Zhuohan (Bella) Jiang

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.

You can find every episode of Public Work on iTunes, and you can listen via the Anchor embed below (or find and download episodes on our Anchor page). We’ve also backed up every episode of Public Work in Brown University’s Digital Repository for long-term preservation.

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)

Shanghai K11

The music on this episode is excerpted from the song “New Day” by Lee Rosevere (licensed via Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International)

Episode 01: Ideas of Interpretation at The Smart Museum of Art

In our first episode, Bryn Pernot, a second year Master’s in Public Humanities student at Brown University, speaks to Michael Christiano, Deputy Director for Audience Engagement and Public Practice at The Smart Museum of Art in Chicago. Their conversation touches on some of the most pressing topics in the museum field: the changing definition of “interpretation”, questions of institutional relevancy faced by museums in the 21st century, and the roles museums can, and should play, in their own neighborhoods and communities.

Bryn Pernot brings together anthropology, art, design, and games to research and develop innovative programs that integrate diverse backgrounds and perspectives and provide a space for public participation. Bryn is on Twitter @bryn_pernot.

Michael Christiano is Deputy Director and Curator of Public Practice at the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago. In this role, he develops strategies and programs that reflect on the nature of the Museum’s institutional practice, with a particular focus on education, interpretation, visitor experience, communications, installation strategy, and other key issues.

You can find every episode of Public Work on iTunes, and you can listen via the Anchor embed below (or find and download episodes on our Anchor page). We’ve also backed up every episode of Public Work in Brown University’s Digital Repository for long-term preservation.

https://anchor.fm/public-work-a-public-humanities-podcast/episodes/Episode-01-Ideas-of-Interpretation-at-The-Smart-Museum-of-Art-e3gonn/a-ac0vli

Show Notes

Emmanuel Pratt,, The Smart Museum’s 2017-18 Interpreter in Residence, is talked about a lot in this episode. You can learn more about Emmanuel and his great work (including some of the public programming mentioned towards the end of the episode) here.

Watch Emmanuel discuss the exciting “We The Publics” project (currently part of The Smart’s “Radical [Re]Constructions” installation here.

For more on The Smart Museum, follow them on Twitter @SmartUChicago.

The music on this episode is excerpted from the song “New Day” by Lee Rosevere (licensed via Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International)

Comments on this episode? Find Public Work on Twitter @PublicWorkPod, or email us: publicworkpodcast[at]gmail.