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The summary of the intern

I take 6 weeks intern in my city- Changchun, China. I choose the institution of a local senior citizens college. In the process, I was mainly responsible for two tasks, assisting two teachers in Fine Arts to develop teaching strategies, and to prepare annual China-Korea calligraphy and painting exhibition of the elderly. During the process of assisting teachers of the class, I have the chance to know more traditional paintings. This may help me in my future study and work, especially in China. Another important thing of the intern is to prepare the exhibition. I have the chance to join the whole process of the exhibition, which give me experience to learn how to prepare an exhibition. In some aspects, I have some problems and difficulties, teachers and supervisors help me a lot. I really thankful these people who help me, I also thank to them to give me the chance to join the exhibition. I can get more knowledge about the traditional art that both in Chinese and Korean. I also can get general idea about how to prepare an exhibition. We have some problems in my city for dealing with art, through this intern; I have more experience and idea about the situation in my country.

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The final thing of our exhibition is the distallation. We need to organize all artworks and catalogue. There are some Korean artworks which are as gifts to our school, so we also need to protect them and put them in our store. Other Korean works, we need to send them back. I need to connect with Korean staff to organize this work. The hard thing is hard to find suitable transport to send them back. They need special care in the process, however, in my city; it is hard to find a company which especial deal with artwork. We just can do some protection by ourselves, and then send them to Korean. After the distallation, we also need to create the database for our artworks. We need to take photos for all works, and then give them back. Some works are as gifts to the school, we just deal them as same as the Korean works, most of them are packed in the store. We also need to arrange the file of this exhibition and the event later. The exhibition and the event will be as a significant achievement of our school in this year.  We need to use this to apply more budgets from local government. The exhibition is the main point of my intern, after this, I still assist our teachers in the class.

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We make this exhibition open to public, so we also have an educational tour. Audience can book for the tour, they can learn more about traditional paintings and calligraphy in this exhibition. The family members of our students are the main part of the audiences. They can know more about their family member. This is also the strategy of the school; they can show the public their work in this year. We also have some talks with Korean artist during the exhibition. They visit some of our classes and have the chance to study Chinese painting. We also can have the experience to see traditional Korean art and crafts. These crafts are interested me, the technics and the colour are really different with us. The paintings, we have similar style, but their paintings are more in colour; they also explain to us their themes and skills. However, audiences are limit in special level. There are less young people attract in this exhibition, as I took the note, the average age of our audiences is over 38. This is really a sad thing. This is the situation in my city. We don’t have so many art exhibitions open to the public, and people not have chance to experience for art. Moreover, for traditional art, young people have no interest in it. The government and the environment not have efficient solution to deal with this problem.

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This year has a big celebration of our party. So, in China, almost every institution, company has an event to celebrate for our government. Our school also have the celebration in July; the exhibition is a part of the event. The opening of the exhibition is also in the same day of the opening of the event. We decide to do them together in our assembly hall. So, the prepared aspects of the opening are different with other exhibitions. We also need clean the hall, prepare the food and the talk, and invite news media. Besides these points, we also need to organise some shows that include play, songs and dances. These are normal aspects in Chinese show.  All of these are prepared by our students. These students are really had experience and interests to do this kind event. We just need to decide what kind of shows need to play early, then they will organise them as soon as possible. This process is prepared a month ago. For the opening, we just need to think about the food and the talk. The food is also not a problem because we have a cooking class in our school; the students can do that for us. We invite some famous artists who are famous in traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy to lead the talk. They can attract more audiences. The opening is successful, everything is great.

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The most important thing is display design. Just as I mentioned before, I really interest in the exhibition design. How can we deal with so much art works, how can we introduce them in this gallery? We have enough staff to prepare the exhibition, we ask for volunteers from students. The exhibition will open on Monday, we just need to meet on Saturday, and do the work. The gallery is on the fifth level of the building which just near the main building. We have clear signs for the direction of the exhibition, we also have poster outside. Everything looks great. We have half a level for the exhibition which is really big space. The interesting thing of the room is we have some movable “walls”. There are some flexible boards which can separate the space in different parts. So, we can have different space for different style artworks. However, we still have too much artwork that can’t be efficient displayed. There is not enough space between each works, especially in traditional Chinese paintings. We have too much works to display; I think some works must be cancelled in this exhibition.  However, they decide to exhibit them all. I can give you an image to show the final result of the exhibition design which is really crowd for artworks. With the help of students, we finish the process in 4 hours. It is a fast process; the final thing is to prepare the opening.

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Design for the exhibition

In this exhibition, we have limit budgets, so we decide to do the design by ourselves. The design includes label, poster, and catalogue. Our courses include Photoshop and Photography. So I just need to connect with some students, let them to do these work. I really have a trouble in this stage. These students, although I call them students, but they are really my mother, even my grandmother age, this gap leads to some problems. We really have different ideas of the design, but how can I say it, we have different background and age; it is hard to decide who is right. And in China, we must give more respects to old people, usually we can’t against them. If you do this, the problem is up to your moral trust. Finally, I leave the decision to our teachers, I just response to print them out. This makes me think about it, how I can deal with people later; I must face this in future. However, this stage is complete in their help. We need to do the design work only; the advertising part belongs to our supervisors. We want to make this exhibition open to the public, so they will communicate with newspapers and local government.

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Prepare for catalogue

The next stage of the exhibition is communication with artists. In this stage, we need talk to all artists and confirm the information of artworks. As we know, we need to write the catalogue and introduce these artworks and artists. This exhibition aims to communicated with other people who interesting in art, so we also want to introduce more information of the art style and skills. I need to talk with artists of traditional Chinese paintings. There are some popular themes of Chinese painting, such as animals, plants, and landscape paintings. Our artists also choose these themes to create paintings. In China, we use some animals and pants to express our emotion that means some kind of objects have special meanings. I know some of them, for example, orchid means honest, fish means wealthy.  However, some objects need artist to explain their purpose. I need to check this information. The different thing of this exhibition is there are so much works. There are more than 60 works that only in traditional Chinese Paintings. I also need to connect with Korean staff, to make sure their works. I saw the gallery before, but I also question in how we can display so many works in one time. However, in this stage I just need to concern and check the information for the catalogue.

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After we decide our artworks, we need to connect with the staff in Korea. We need to know the number and the style of their works. Then we can design the area in the exhibition for them. Also, they will have some students and teachers come here. That means we need to organize a lot things for them, such as translator, hotel, and transport. Another important thing is we need their information to create the database. This process is response by my experienced supervisors; they have the connection details of the institution in Korea. At this stage, my work is organizing the information of artworks, trying to find some similarities between Chinese traditional paintings and Korean paintings. This may help us in the design process. In this process, I also get the chance to know and study the characters of Korean paintings. As we know, Korean painting has a lot of similarities with Chinese paintings, but through these works, I think the big difference is the colour. For Chinese paintings, we can use colours to express the idea, but we usually prefer to use black and white, because too much colours may disperse the full image. It hard to explain clearly, you can see this as a kind of traditions. We also have some famous colour tradition paintings, but the main style is still the black and white. The style of Korean paintings is like to use colours. In the exhibition, I find almost half of their works use bright colours, and some use more than five colours in one painting that is really different with Chinese paintings. This deference is one point of this exhibition; we study and communicate with them. Finally, we get 30 sample images from them, which include paintings, photos and crafts. This information can be used in the next stage.

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The first stage of the annual China-Korea calligraphy and painting exhibition is art work selection. The exhibition didn’t have a theme; the main purpose of the exhibition is the communication between two countries with the special group. The exhibition is displaying in Changchun this year, so we response to take a big party of the exhibition. All the artworks of the exhibition are from our students. We put a note first, to ask students submit two works for each one, and the subject and style are free. You can give us Chinese traditional paintings, calligraphies, photos, crafts, and paintings. Every style is welcome in the exhibition, however, not all works can display in the exhibition. Every teacher of the subject is the judge of their area. I need to organize all works, and separate them for teachers. At this time, I can see all the works first and choose my favourites, and then compare with the choice of teachers. This can give me an idea what is the difference and how to evaluate some works. Especially in Chinese traditional paintings, some evaluations are really different with western paintings. We focus on the spirit of the work which may appears on colour, space, objects scheme and technique of drawing. The colour can explain as different level of the ink. Usually, Chinese traditional paintings prefer black and white style; so the different level of the ink is the method to express the space. This process helps me to get more knowledge and practice to know and evaluate these paintings. We spend a week to choose art works, some of these are really amazing works, which cannot be believed belonging to students. I cannot show you these works, this is so sad. Finally, we choose more than 200 works in all areas, which is huge challenging for design the exhibition. This is the problem; I don’t think we can display so many collections in our gallery. However, the exhibition was going on.

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My general work in the institution

In this institution, I was mainly responsible for two tasks, assisting two teachers in Fine Arts to develop teaching strategies, and to prepare annual China-Korea calligraphy and painting exhibition of the elderly. Before the exhibition, I need to assist two teachers for traditional Chinese fine art. The first day, I just prepared the teaching staff for teachers, and then as a student in a class. Through this process; I have more ideas about the traditional Chinese painting. This is really useful experience for me. If I work in China, such kind of art works takes a major role in museums. There is too much knowledge that needs to know. And this is a real studying process in my intern. After few days, I also need to help other students in the class. I need to talk with them after the class and get more feedback for lectures, and then communicated with teachers and find out solutions. The questions and feedback are improving the quality of class. At the same time, students can have clear and efficient communication with us. My important responsibility is as a member in all the process of annual China-Korea calligraphy and painting exhibition. This process includes artwork selection, advertising, exhibition prepare, exhibition design, exhibition opening, and exhibition recording. The teachers and my supervisor were taking the leader of the exhibition. I just did everything I can do for the exhibition and follow their roles.

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This journal, I want to introduce the institution of my intern. It is an educational institution in my hometown. It focuses on the art education of local senior citizens. It includes classes of dancing, calligraphy, photography, sketch, painting, traditional Chinese painting, crafts making and others. It aims to make an interesting retired living for local citizens. These classes are not free to public, but just with few fees which are for some materials. It opens to public, but limits within the special background of the student. It isn’t need students have the background of the class, but the special background of their working institution. There is a list, only institutions and companies on the list, their retired employees can study in this “college”. Usually these institutions and companies are belonging to the government. However, the biggest sponsor of this institution is local government and the purpose is trying to involving more local senior citizens. So it is trying to attract more senior people to join classes. The institution has its own gallery that is displaying some Chinese traditional art works. Every year, it has an exhibition for all students. We choose some works and display them to the public. There is an important exhibition every year, which is a corporate exhibition with a similar institution of Korean.  I should give you some information, you know, there are so many similarities between traditional Chinese art and Korean art; and my hometown is near South Korean and North Korea, we always have some communications and exchanges with these two countries. This exhibition is the important experience of my internship and I will introduce it later. I just want to say that, the institution has really high level art education in my city, especially in the aspect of traditional Chinese art work. For traditional Chinese art, the worth of artwork is always equal to the age of artist. Some of these students are famous artist in China; they just want to find a flexible environment to communicate. I really like this opportunity to work here; it has its special position in the city.

The first journal

Brief situation of museums and galleries in China

In China, museums and galleries have very different situation. Museums are usually belonging to states and governments. Some important museums of culture and history are founded and supported by the government. These kinds of museums such as National Museum of China, Shanxi History Museum and Nanjing Museum have plentiful finance supports from the national and local government. All of these museums introduce the trace and history of Chinese of civilization and show the change and transformation of social life and the tradition. Such kind of museum is the most famous and popular museum in China. However, these museums are always not free to the public: because the entrance fee is an important income of museums. Some museums are the most popular tourist attractions of the local state. One example is Museum of the Terra- cotta Warriors and Horses of Qin Shihuang. Since the museum’s opening to the public, it already has more than 50 million visitors.

Galleries are usually founded by private or organizations. They are usually survived by art business and other sponsors. These galleries are ways relevant with contemporary art. Currently, private art galleries usually display in some important cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. In other cities, few private galleries have survival space and continue for a long time. However, private galleries are increasing in China, the environment of art and galleries is developing. In China, a new management style of museums has been developed, that is, some private galleries and art studios have a cooperation to constitute an art zoon. “798” is an example of artistic community in Beijing, which can hold more than 1000 guests: 1000 square meters and up to 9 meters high structural exhibition. It includes galleries, shops, design studios, restaurants and other cultural institutions. The high lever and various exhibitions in different galleries attract visitors and researching groups. It can solve their financial issue with some commercial shows and trades. It is a positive example of galleries developing in China.

These are just general information of the situation, I just want you have some basic ideas. Also, another important point in China is the policy, or you can understand as the power of the party. All the formal museums which funded by the government, need to follow the policy of the party. That means the limit of the art, and with more political voice or purpose. This is really sad thing of our developing.