Last night, a group of art museum curators who came to Shanghai to participate in the Expo Association gathered in Shanghai moca to visit the exhibition. Interestingly, the topic of the curator finally led to the Shanghai Art Museum. The Shanghai Biennale on display has undoubtedly attracted people's attention, but from the perspective of the Biennale, the venue space of the art museum has finally become the focus of the topic, and the Shanghai Exhibition Center on Yan 'an Middle Road has become a possible direction for the expansion of the art museum.

The space problem has a long history.

Xie Penny, director of Kaohsiung Art Museum in Taiwan Province Province, thinks that the architecture of Shanghai Art Museum is great, "but it is too small". Xie Penny, who once exhibited in Shanghai Art Museum, complained that the exhibition in this historic building would be subject to many construction restrictions, and the spatial distribution of the exhibition hall itself was not ideal for many exhibitions. Moreover, with the vigorous development of new media art and installation art, Shanghai Art Museum is out of date, lacking sufficient motivation and multimedia interface. These complaints may be trivial, but for some works of art, they may be a big obstacle. Xie Penny's complaints are quite sympathetic. The Kaohsiung Art Museum, which she is in charge of, is the largest art museum in Taiwan Province Province, covering an area of 42 hectares. In this somewhat luxurious venue, the functions of the art museum, including exhibition, public popularization, academic research and art collection, can be carried out smoothly.

Shanghai Art Museum has always been short of money. "It's hard to build a collection." Li Lei, executive director of Shanghai Art Museum, said that it is not only a matter of money, after all, many artists are willing to donate their works to public art institutions for free. Before collecting, we should first consider the size of the works and the capacity of the warehouse. This is the embarrassment of Shanghai Art Museum. At the Shanghai Biennale in 2006, the large-scale installation "uterus" that attracted many people's attention was too big for artists to keep alone, and there was not enough space in the art museum. Finally, this huge work was demolished. In fact, this happens every biennale. Li Lei said that due to space constraints, large-scale exhibitions such as the Biennale should consider the volume factor when selecting works. The same thing will happen at other exhibitions. When Cui Ruzhuo, an ink painter, held a solo exhibition in Shanghai Art Museum this year, his latest masterpiece "The Prosperous Age of Lotus Wind" for the Great Hall of the People could not be exhibited in Shanghai because the exhibition hall could not accommodate it.

Expansion on the agenda

When did the Shanghai Art Museum narrow down? This beautiful building has experienced the identity changes of horse racing club, Shanghai Library, Shanghai Art Exhibition Hall and Shanghai Art Museum. Its space has never increased or decreased, only the times have changed. Today, at most three exhibitions of Shanghai Art Museum will open at the same time. With the surge of the art industry, the architecture born in the slow era finally seems more and more cramped.

Xie Penny believes that among the art galleries in world-class cities, Shanghai Art Museum is definitely the smallest one. "Shanghai should have an art museum commensurate with its status as an international city." Guo Jianchao, director of the National Art Museum of Singapore, strongly suggested that the Shanghai Art Museum "expand". He believes that only in this way can the Shanghai Art Museum improve itself from the social and cultural functions. For the time being, Shanghai Art Museum seems to be based on large-scale exhibitions such as Biennale. In fact, as an art gallery of a city, the change of urban visual art is its fundamental direction.

For Shanghai Art Museum, this is an embarrassing topic. Since modern times, Shanghai has been the most important city for China's visual arts creation. Both the earliest exploration of ink painting and the earliest acceptance and transformation of western painting took place in Shanghai. However, the history of such an important city image exploration is hard to find in the exhibition of Shanghai Art Museum. I have to say that this is its long-term dereliction of duty. Under the pressure of financial expenditure, the art museum has to use limited space for a large number of "rental exhibitions". Small space is also part of the reason.

The latest good news is that a broad blueprint is being planned. Li Lei revealed that it may be possible to transform the Shanghai Exhibition Center into a Shanghai Art Museum, while the original site remains. Obviously this is a bold idea. The Shanghai Art Museum, with an area of just over 10000 square meters, has "merged" several times the area of its own Shanghai Exhibition Center. Is this an operation plan? In this regard, Li Lei said that this requires further demonstration by the competent authorities. Whether the merger plan is finally realized or not, at least the expansion of Shanghai Art Museum has been put on the agenda of the cultural authorities. The existence of this possibility will arouse many people's reverie.