A Year at the Museum

Hong Kong may be a financial centre, but it is increasingly a cultural one, too. It is the only Asian site for Art Basel; the M+ and Palace Museums both opened within the last four years; and there are growing numbers of public and private art events. With that activity has come a demand for professionals trained in managing and curating art exhibitions. HKU’s new Master of Museum Studies, where classes are held in UMAG, is the only local programme to offer that training.

UMAG Director and part-time Associate Professor in the School of Humanities, Dr Florian Knothe, spearheaded the programme with the Faculty of Arts.

“This programme differs from other programmes in that it is really museum-initiated and museum-based, so our students have access to objects and galleries here. We have structured it more like an MBA [Master of Business Administration] programme where half of the teachers are also professionals in the field and half are from academia,” he said.

Students learn from both academic literature and their teachers’ experience in the field. “For example, presenting art collections online, with digital photography and other resources, seems an easy option, but behind the scenes, it is very costly for museums – you need object handlers, a photographer, a collections manager to orchestrate the whole thing and researchers to provide information on each object. We try to bring these richer perspectives to our students,” he said.

East and West perspectives

The classes also explore contentious issues such as the impact on museums of social movements like Black Lives Matter and of climate change. The question of how to make museums more accessible is also raised in the context of East-West differences.

“A lot has been done in the West to include minorities by providing exhibition tours in different languages and for those with physical disabilities. This area is a lot less developed in Asia so we speak to students about how hurdles are jumped or how systems could be put in place to be more inclusive here,” Dr Knothe said.

The first cohort of 47 students has just completed the year-long programme of a core course covering basic administration and curation, electives, and a credit-bearing internship over the summer. Students must also produce a dissertation.

Dr Knothe said the response to requests for internships showed strong demand for trained museum professionals. Government and private museums in Hong Kong, galleries and auction houses, and venues in the US and Mainland China all offered spots and some wanted to employ students right away (they have to complete the credit-bearing internship first).

“It was an overwhelming response. Our partners said: ‘This is great, we finally have this programme in Hong Kong.’ We know that there is a growing museum industry that has been happening in Mainland China for a while and we have witnessed that here in Hong Kong. This is an opportunity for museums to gain experienced museum staff,” said Dr Knothe.

Fulfilling a long-held goal

The students themselves are also enthusiastic about the programme. Rachel Yan had a background in advertising but wanted to develop qualifications related to her interest in art and culture. “My experience with the programme has been very satisfying. The professors were supportive and I gained practical experience through a six-month, part-time internship with the Art Basel Hong Kong’s Operations Team, in addition to my summer internship. I feel I have been prepared to becoming an art and culture practitioner,” she said.

Li Hao had studied history previously and wanted to learn how to make it more interactive for the public, from both China and international perspectives. “My expectations have largely been met. The faculty at HKU come from varied backgrounds and they enriched our learning experience with different viewpoints on museum operations, art history, digitalisation, education and market dynamics.”

Mia Zhang Xinyi is an artist herself who wanted to understand how to better engage audiences and archive and display works. “The most memorable part was participating in the exhibition planning and curation for a workshop jointly organised by UMAG and the City University of Hong Kong. Our professors allowed us to truly enter the industry circle and apply our classroom knowledge in real-world contexts.”

For Dr Knothe, the programme fulfils his long-held goal of making UMAG a teaching museum. “Since I arrived in 2013, we have taught an undergraduate course and public programmes. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we developed an online teaching platform for secondary school children. Now, with the postgraduate degree, we have young adults with us every day. We’ve come a long way. Almost everybody at the museum is involved in teaching in one way or another,” he said.