On the morning of October 25, 2015, the opening ceremony for the first College Students Cultural Heritage Creative Design Competition was held in conjunction with Peking University (PKU) International Cultural Festival. Hosted by the School of Archeology and Museology of PKU, the competition aims at showing the combination of the traditional and the modern, the creativity of the students, and the beauty of traditions in our daily life.
The opening ceremony was hosted by Professor Han Kan, Dean of the School of Archaeology and Museology. The event also saw the attendance of Professor Ye jingyi, Vice Chairman of the PKU Council, Mr. Tian Kai, the Director of Henan Provincial Museum, and Professor Donald Stone from the School of Foreign Languages.
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In his opening speech, Prof. Ye warmly welcomed the guests and stressed the importance of the outreach efforts of a museum. “People usually think that the role of a museum is simply to collect and to protect cultural items. However, this is only one of the aspects of a museum. A museum should also provide an innovative aspect, providing new meanings and new functions to the novel ideas.”
Professor Stone, a generous donor to the Arthur M. Sackler Museum of Art and Archaeology at PKU, laid importance on cross-culture exchange. Based on his own experience working in China for the past 30 years, Prof.Stone considered that the best practices of culture exchange was the combination of the best parts of Chinese and Western cultures. Events such as the competition would be able to engage the youth to deeply get involed in the meaningful practices.
At the end, Mr. Tian emphasized that with the rapidly economic development of China, the next step towards globalization was an improved appreciation of cultures all over the world. “There is no absolute traditions, only relative creativity”, and museums could play the important role of instilling such appreciation.
As a part of the launching ceremony, an exhibition titled “Experience the Beauty of Cultural Heritage” was held. The exhibition showcased works from students, who based their inspirations on traditional culture relics. The creativity of the students gave existing cultural relics new meanings, and provided a refreshing experience combining both traditions and modernity.
Written by: Wang Kangwei
Edited by: Wei Yuchen
