ABSTRACT
Seduced by a fantasy of the economic potential of the cultural industries, Asian governments have dramatically increased their investment in building new museums in recent years. Copying models from the West, Ho argues that these new museums are irrelevant to the local cultural experience. Amidst such a frenzy of new museum construction, it is necessary to integrate creative expressions back into the community in order for the arts to serve the basic function of touching people’s hearts. From a simple act of visiting the fishing village at Tai O to witnessing the creative explosion at the occupied zones during the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong, one can find alternative platforms which reconfirm the wisdom of the Sixth Patriarch Huineng, an illiterate Cantonese known for bringing alive the call of Zen Buddhism for ‘skipping the words and going directly into the heart’. It might be time to look back into the heart instead of the glamour and formality of building this institution called museum.
