Making antiques speak to us
Did you know that there are more than 4000 people depicted in Along the River During the Qingming Festival? Masters of the art of nonsense, the social media editors of the National Palace Museum (NPM) have exploited this Song-Dynasty scroll painting to create comic Captain America memes and to convey anti-coronavirus precautions. For the latter purpose, the editors made the painted figures adhere to social distancing by pulling them away from each other. Netizens admire the serious museum’s chummy new persona.
Jewel Lin, who often jokes about being the most “senior” social media editor in Taiwan, didn’t volunteer to do this job. An expert now, at first she didn’t even understand Internet slang such as “8+9” (thugs) and “484” (asking for confirmation). Her most popular posts include “Which is your type of New Year’s Eve?” and a collection of slips of paper bearing the comment “understood” in the handwriting of eight Qing-Dynasty emperors. Lin has given the museum’s ancient treasures a modern relevance.
The National Palace Museum Shop’s Facebook page also has a large following. The editors there turned a reproduction of the museum’s Northern-Song lotus-shaped wine warming bowl into a classy container for instant noodles, to capture the feelings of office workers before and after payday. Sindia Chang, marketing manager and one of the editors for the museum shop, explains that their aim is to raise awareness, their target audience being professionals and culturally engaged people aged 25 to 35. The editors use young people’s language, investing the shop’s cultural merchandise with new creative meanings. They have received a stunningly positive response.
The NPM Southern Branch opened to the public in 2015, in an area that had been something of a cultural desert. Editor Chou I-wen says that the Southern Branch has been making every effort to interact with local residents in order to boost art education and promote equal access to culture. Five years on, local children have become regular visitors to the museum. The seeds of art are germinating.
The NPM’s three fan pages attract different audiences, but as Jewel Lin observes, they actually complement each other.
These social media pages serve as new points of contact between the public and the museum. Feedback from social media users can lead to interesting outcomes. Lin remembers a post promoting the exhibition Rebuilding the Tong-an Ships in 2017. In response to the information about rampant piracy along China’s southeast coast in the late 18th century, netizens wanted to know how people at the time would have identified pirate ships. Lin posed the question to the curator, who replied: “They have been watching Pirates of the Caribbean too much.” Most pirate ships in fact masqueraded as ordinary commercial vessels. Nevertheless the question prompted the curator to furnish new information and replace some objects on display, thus making the exhibition even more approachable.
Bearing witness to government agencies’ efforts to transform the way they communicate with the public, the stories of these social media editors make us feel proud of Taiwan.
Yating suspects that her husband Jiahao is having an affair, but it is just a call from the nursery school to warn them about Typhoon Danas. The MOE took this opportunity to promote the new “quasi-public nursery schools.”
Yating invited Internet celebrities to display the hurtful nicknames they were given in the past, raising public awareness of bullying at school.
Yating invited Internet celebrities to display the hurtful nicknames they were given in the past, raising public awareness of bullying at school.
Yating invited Internet celebrities to display the hurtful nicknames they were given in the past, raising public awareness of bullying at school.
The MOE editors borrowed themes from the Japanese manga series Case Closed to promote the new curriculum guidelines, creating a genial persona for the minister of education.
The NPM has adapted to modern times, bringing history down to earth and making art approachable. (courtesy of NPM fan page)
Buddha announcing zero confirmed cases (courtesy of NPM Southern Branch fan page)
Memes: Along the River During the Qingming Festival (after Captain America) (courtesy of NPM Shop fan page)
Memes: Along the River During the Qingming Festival (after Captain America) (courtesy of NPM Shop fan page)