The theme of International Museum Day in 2024 focused on “Museums as Contributors to Education and Research”, which is not only a profound interpretation of the role of museums worldwide, but also a perfect annotation of the 70-year glorious history of Shandong Museum.
Shandong Museum, located in Jinan, China’s Shandong Province, is a national first-class museum and a national-level museum jointly built by the central government and local authorities. Completed and opened to the public in 2010, the new Shandong Museum boasts a total floor area of 128,000 square meters. It features 23 exhibition halls covering 25,000 square meters and houses a collection of over 400,000 artifacts, with a special focus on oracle bone inscriptions, Han dynasty stone carvings, and costumes. Since its establishment in 1954, Shandong Museum has been dedicated to the inheritance of Qilu culture, the promotion of public education and academic research, becoming one of the important bases for the inheritance and development of Confucian culture in China.
Shandong Museum takes education as one of its core missions, and has launched a variety of educational activities, including thematic lectures, immersive experiences, and digital interactive study tours, to meet the needs of in-depth visits for visitors of different age groups. In the context of the integration of culture and tourism, Shandong Museum has constructed a new education model through cross-border cooperation, achieving a breakthrough in bringing museum education into people’s daily lives.
Shandong Museum, based on its educational functions, has embarked on a journey of innovation and branding. By focusing on audience needs, it has innovated the educational approach and created flagship educational programs, fostering a virtuous cycle where educational excellence drives brand building and, in turn, brand recognition fuels museum educational development. And by driving visits and research through events, the maximal utilization of museum resources is finally achieved.
Shandong Museum makes full use of its cultural relics resources to develop a series of educational products. From the development of courses to teaching aids and learning tools, the “Zhishu” “Dali” series of research and education products have been formed. From crowns to costumes, Shandong Museum speaks for cultural relics, achieving a transformation from “tangible” to “intangible” and then from “intangible” to “tangible”. At the same time, Shandong Museum expands its international perspective by designing activities including the “Crowning for Love” educational event based on the exhibition of “From the Mundane to the Magnificent: Napoleon and France in an Era of Transition”. This program transitions from the use of crowns to DIY crowns, achieving a fusion of Chinese and Western cultures.