编撰一部事关十年的年鉴，是费力的。
因为它不是一件简单的“剪刀加浆糊”式的工作，它涉及了学院十年内几十个院系的教改路径、几十个国家间不同层次的学术交流。有许多精彩的个案和逐渐显现价值的人物和事件。尤其2003-2012年的十年，正是中国美术学院基础建设快速发展、高端学科全面提升、教改研创成果卓著的活跃期。要从大小几百个不同类型的展览和纷繁的学术思考里，彰显学院“和而不同”的办学理念，把握学科建设与社会发展互生共赢的脉搏，提炼整合出不同院系不同阶段不同切入点，以及他们在锐意创新求变内的传承关系、显现出的新人新风新格局，传播美术馆践行“十年塑三窗”（许江语）的学理用心……至少，改建扩建后的美术馆，在再次调整办馆理念和学术针对性中，通过整理和编撰年鉴的工作，既是一个重新认识美术馆、加强美术馆学术建设的必须工作，也是美术馆为在“大学美术馆时代”完成使命、追求理想、实现价值的奠基工作。
基于此，改建扩建后的中国美术学院美术馆，应具备继往开来的文化视野和宽阔的学术胸怀，应在前人成果的基础上面对“大学美术馆”时代的新目标和新任务。因此，年鉴的编撰，其实是为美术馆日后工作立的一块新路标。是一块为面对现实境遇变迁时产生勇气与智慧的基石。
所以说，大学美术馆时代不是一个简单称谓，也不是空洞的符号，它是指：知识经济时代的大学美术馆，将不再局限在“以物为中心”的典藏、陈列、研究的传统模式。它勾勒出了一种非线性的、跨学科界限的，以视觉文化研究为基础的协同结构。挑明了经济全球化形成的知识经济、全媒体、自媒体现象，这些告别整体性、统一性的现象，正极大改变和拓宽了教育传播、价值判断、视觉与文化、传播与流通的内容与形式；大众文化和公民社会等以人为本的理念深入人心，不仅提出了文化共享的社会要求，也显示出未来国际间竞争不会仅停留在政治经济领域，更多重要的比拼将会发生在文化领域的变迁关系。所谓“知识经济”“软实力”，通俗点说，就是思想全球化，是把哲学和文化艺术带入技术时代的一种方式。
因此，美术馆（博物馆），作为人类社会价值观和视觉文化创新集中体现的视听一体的平台和窗口，过去通过以“物件”为中心的方式蒐集研究人类文明的结晶的方式，必然转向“以教育为中心”的传播方式。实际上，此类变迁还只是就已有的藏品做文章的方式。它并不能充分体现美术馆更应作为心物互动的空间的新要求，并不只是完成“典藏、研究、推广”等认识世界的基本作用上。它还应在认识基础上，完成适应时代的更新与改造上的知识生产与传播的追求。伴随着公共性、服务性、非营利，以及要求为社会发展提供充裕文化知识等定义被实践与实现，强调观众是美术馆存在的终极价值所在的“以观点为中心”，甚至强调“资本制造”的“以市场和市场竞争”等方式转向的现象也出现都了。这正是当今“大学美术馆”当大发展的契机。同时，美术馆也会因此更深刻地陷入学术与商业、艺术社会化等结构性和观念性调整的挑战。
在梳理了2003-2012年的展览年表里，我们可以清晰地从《地之缘——亚洲当代艺术计划》、《学院的力量》、《国美之路》、《实验在继续》四大板块中，看到自新千年开始，中国美术学院面对教育空前发展的机遇，是如何把握教育改革的核心关切，以“一种非西方经验”的文化研究态度，提出了“如何坚持独立思考”，培养“四通人才”，“服务地方文化发展事业”等可视性文化成果。我也可以通过《师恩长存》、《十载积淀》、《毕业季》三个板块，一窥学院尊师重道，重建既有鲜活个性，又有社会担当的教育实践的新风貌。
虽然，试图在特定模式的架构中捕捉美术馆年度主题内具备促进“知识生产”和“艺术社会化”操作效果等因素，并不难从“年鉴”的七大板块中发现端倪，找到脉络。但是，这样的学术企图，仍不能确切解释“大学美术馆”应采取主动介入社会的学术姿态的因果关系。恐怕这也正是编撰年鉴时，希望留给有心思考这一问题的学者、读者们埋下的一个线索。
假如有些问题是必须面对的，有些门槛是要有勇气跨越的，就莫过于去正视而不是回避了。因此，年鉴编撰工作，一方面意在昭示了美术馆的辉煌曾经，一方面也使我们有信心去面对未来，而对当今主张文化多元、承认差异、鼓励文化创新的集体性索求。基于此，大学美术馆的发展，出了硬件设置的改善外，显然需要充分认识到今天得天独厚的资源优势，并不能确保明天仍然掌握在你手中的危机，即使大学美术馆先天就植根在“知识生产”的现场，拥有源源不断的生力军和专门的研究机构。事实已证明：过去“追随式”和“二手知识”应用性的发展思路，以及毫无文化性格和独立主张的美术馆，都将被淘汰出局；即使政府在加大教育基础设施投入，大学美术馆的展陈空间和硬件设备有了质的提升。当我们把大学美术馆的视野投向社会，早已出现了名目众多的文创产业、拍卖行和私营美术馆等市场化现象，其拥有灵活的市场机制和紧扣社会需求的运作方法，虽然良莠不齐，但一个巨大而无序的市场能量正以成倍数的交易额改变着今日中国的艺术格局。这些已然发生的事实，表明“知识经济”必然产生新的竞争机制。大学美术馆将既是文化交流的聚集地，也将成为财富聚集地。成为国家乃至地区社会经济发展的重要支撑之一。如果不能及时调整办馆理念，主动搭建艺术与社会，产品与营销的桥梁，走商业与学术并举之路。为社会提供所需要的知识营养，回答社会关切的问题，是很难将文化推向社会、推向世界的。
所以说，在改革开放三十年后的今天，大学美术馆理应承担“艺术社会化”和“知识生产”的要求。不仅这样的要求已然见诸于各地政府的发展规划中，社会民间力量和社会竞争方式已由政治经济转向了文化艺术领域，也在于大学已经开始在社会体系的操作效果方面施加了改造与合作的影响。这种改造和合作是基于大学秉持的学术理想和知识专擅，并且深刻地转换成改造大学内部运作机制，并有力地促进了大学和大学美术馆将知识生产的成效转化到大学体系之外的创造系统中去了的具体作为。随着大学教育理论、知识生产方式的多元性，传授方法与手段的技术性更新，通过与外界进行能量和质量的交换，美术馆居中起到举足轻重的协调作用，也形成了重构自我派生的空间和条件。
“大学美术馆时代”的提法本身就是一个过程性概念。今天所以如此热衷于这个概念的讨论，表明了在“知识经济时代”的条件内，物质与精神间的平衡关系出现了问题。如何成为这一过程中的正能量，如何在肩负历史的回望和未来的展望的双重要求下，实现大学美术馆成为这一过程中“外观与内视”的窗口效应，正是编撰年鉴的动力，也是鞭策美术馆排除万难奋力工作的要求。
杨劲松
2013年7月9日晚
Expression and Reflection
The New Origins of the Gallery
Composing a review for the past ten years is by no means been a simple task. It isn’t a matter of simply cutting and pasting, and instead encompasses all the numerous reforms made by the China Academy of Art’s (CAA) departments during the last ten years, along with various academic dialogues that have taken place between the academy and parties in other nations. There are many instances deserving of mention, along with persons and affairs that have gradually proven their value during this time. Especially reflecting on the period between 2003 and 2012, the time the CAA began to develop actively upon its foundations, promoting higher-level studies, thus quickly reaping the fruits of innovation and reform, in order to convey adequately the effective tri-fenestration implemented by the gallery during this decade (Xu Jiang, referring to a metaphorical opening of windows, expressing: one, the academy’s sense of mission; two, its intellectual development and three, its innovative activities), one must review in light of their various focuses and proportions the hundreds of exhibitions and academic trains of thought that have emerged during this time. The review must also reflect the Academy’s principled promotion of difference through assimilation, encompassing the twin pulses of academia and the social, the mutual currents of their development, as well as the critical combination of numerous academic disciplines, their varying progressions and points of departure, interrelations and inheritances, whilst also actively seeking to innovate, reflecting the circumstances of emerging individuals and trends.
Following the gallery’s reconfiguration and expansion, the adjustment of its operational principles and academic engagements, at the very least, composing the review for the past ten years ought to provide an opportunity to become reacquainted with the gallery in consideration of these changes, attending to the necessary reinforcement of its intellectual foundation, whilst also exerting an influence vital in realising its missions, ideals and core values.
Following its reconfiguration and expansion, given these foundations, the gallery of the CAA must now carry on the causes and perspectives of former days, embracing expansive intellectual sentiments and taking the achievements of years past as grounds from which to meet the new targets and responsibilities faced by university art museums today. Composing this review is therefore an act of laying a bedrock for subsequent trajectories; a cornerstone from which the gallery can gauge the changing face of the times with both daring and sagacity.
That is to say, labelling the present as the age of university art museums isn’t merely an empty coin of phrase, and rather indicates the university art museum’s place in the intellectual economy. No longer limited by the traditional responsibilities of material accumulation and display, along with their associated research activities, the museum’s non-linear, inter-disciplinary structure, focuses instead on the multiple potentials for research in visual culture. Fragmentary and dispersed, the intellectual economy that has emerged from the currents of economic globalisation, the world’s media and media phenomena, has massively altered the content and form of the means via which education takes place, broadening the range of this and embedding in the hearts of the people humanist ideals relating to mass culture and society. Not only does this demand societies share their cultures, it also suggests that in the future, the competition at present occurring between nations will take place not only in the fields of politics and economy, but that changing relations in the cultural sphere will also prove to be of increasing importance.
The so-called intellectual economy and soft power are generally perceived as the means by which the processes of intellectual globalisation take philosophy and creative culture into the technological age. Hence with the art museum (museums in general even) functioning as an audio-visual stage, a window for manifesting innovations in visual culture and social values, research practice shifts from its material basis and becomes instead an education centred means of transmitting cultural material. As it is, at present such transformations often only focus on select pieces from museums’ collections, perhaps producing written accompaniments for these; hence their being unable to manifest adequately the requirement for museums to act as spaces for uniting mind and object, whilst of course still fulfilling the basic functions of museums, to collect, research and extend, thus promoting a greater understanding of the world. In addition to this, the museum ought on the basis of understanding to attune itself to the transformations of each era, producing new knowledge and seeking to transmit this. Whilst operating as not for profit, public service centres, at the same time, museums ought to offer society a manifest abundance of cultural knowledge, emphasising through practice the importance of their publics, with ideals as a centre; even manifesting transitional emphases on phenomena of capital or markets to achieve this. This opens a window key in developing the university art museum, with the museum becoming more readily able to intervene profoundly in the spheres of academia and industry, striving to effect the so-called aestheticisation of society, along with other structural and ideal shifts.
Sorting through the inventory of exhibitions for the years 2003-2012, the four exhibitions Borderlines: A Survey of Contemporary Asian Art, The Power of the Academy, The Way to the Academy and Continuous Practice, all make it plain to see how from the beginning of the 21st Century the CAA has developed its curricula as never before, taking educational reform as a basis. Combined with a research stance based upon non-occidental experience, proposals have been made with regard to how best to maintain autonomy of reflection, cultivate well-rounded expertise and support local culture and enterprises, amongst other culturally oriented projects. It is also possible to regard the three exhibitions A Mentor’s Grace, Ten Years’ Accrual and Graduation Season as expressions of the Academy’s reverence for tutorial expertise and pedagogic method; striving to establish from this a fresh, idiosyncratic and socially efficacious pedagogic practice.
Taking such a specific framework as a means of coming to terms with issues such as knowledge production and the socialisation of art, among other subjects addressed by the museum over the past years, and having reviewed the seven shows mentioned above, it is also already not difficult to find certain portents here; drawing from these a network of sorts. However, an academic project of this sort remains incapable of explicating thoroughly the causal links connecting the university art museum, active social intervention and the social dimension of academia. It would seem nonetheless that composing this annual review presents academics and readers wishing to reflect upon these questions with a tacit clue or sorts.
Suppose there are certain issues that must be faced, certain thresholds that need a degree of courage to cross - these must be faced directly, not avoided. It is in composing this annual review therefore, that in one respect we intend to express publicly the museum’s past triumphs; whilst providing ourselves at the same time with the assurance we need to face the future, placing emphasis upon the multiplicity of contemporary cultures, acknowledging difference and promoting the collective dimension of cultural innovation. Given these foundations and improvements in basic hardware aside, the university art museum’s development of course also requires extensive knowledge of contemporary resources; at the same time acknowledging the risk of the institution’s losing touch with its context. Hence the university art museum’s roots in the sites of knowledge production, imbue it with an endless vitality, this as well as certain specialised research structures. As the facts testify, the past’s following suit in relying simply on second hand knowledge, that is, thought only in an applied sense, along with art museums devoid of cultural identity or independent values, such practices and phenomena are all increasingly outmoded. The government now feel compelled to invest more significantly in the nation’s pedagogic foundations, raising the standards of the hardware in university art museum exhibition spaces. When we turn the gaze of the university art museum towards society, there emerge quickly a variety of innovative cultural enterprises, auctioneers and private art museums, amongst other market phenomena to accompany this. Possessing such a flexible market structure and given their close connections to societal necessity, although the operations of these institutions remains somewhat uneven, the potential of such an enormous, chaotic market has increased manifold the number of art dealers, altering the circumstances of Chinese art today. These events have proven the intellectual economy will inevitably produce new competitive structures. As university art museums are also set to become a meeting place for cultural dialogue, in addition to being centres for capital; they also become important supports for regional, even national economical development. If we are unable to attend promptly to our management ideals, actively uniting art and society, product and sale, stepping onto the dual byways of trade and academia, thus providing society with the intellectual nourishment it requires and answering those questions society attends to most ardently, it will be most difficult to bring culture into society and the world as a whole.
This is to say that today, thirty years after China’s liberation and opening to the outside world, the management of the nation’s university art museums must acknowledge the need for art’s socialisation and the importance of the production of knowledge. Not only are such requirements evidenced already in the developmental strategies laid out by numerous regional governments, civil potential and the modes of social competition have also begun to shift from the realms of politics and economy towards the cultural sphere, at the same time strengthening the influence of university art galleries’ projects, their reconfiguring of society and engagement in collaboration. In conjunction with the university’s pedagogic theory, the multiplicity of knowledge production modes, the renewal of techniques in transmission, engagement in exchanges of quality and energy, university art museums play a decisive intermediary role, deriving the spaces and conditions necessary to reconstruct personal identities.
The era of university art museums is a concept centred on process. Today, the many heated discussions on the notion illustrate that within the so-called era of intellectual economy, questions are being asked about the balanced relationship that connects the material and the spiritual. How is it one exerts a force critical in this process? Both supporting historical reflection and future aspirations. How is it one makes the university art museum exert an enlightening influence, conducive to both expression and reflection? It is these questions that provide the composition of this annual review with its driving force, at the same time urging the art museum to overcome the arduous nature of its missions.
Yang Jinsong——9th July 2013
