The Chinese government intends to build 1,000 new museums across the country by 2015.A scary piece by Elizabeth Casale in The Platform, an e-zine on cultural policy, says that with approximately 100 urban areas with a population of 1 million or more, China’s place-based cultural strategy favours buildings as a symbol of cultural sophistication over the other components necessary for a vibrant cultural life: cultural producers, products and consumers. Stories have been circulating about the Shanghai Grand Theatre often half-empty for lack of interesting programming, Casale writes, or of state-of-the-art equipment that few employees know how to use.
Elizabeth Casale: China’s New Cultural Revolution
