Future of the Museum in China - Research Team with Artist/Activist Ai Weiwei

Concurrent with China's rapid urbanization is a museum building boom which is producing an average of approximately 100 new museums a year across the country, with even greater numbers most recently. These often iconic structures act as landmarks for newly planned government and civic centers, CBDs, cultural districts, and even in some cases, residential and commercial developments, symbolizing the value of culture in the identity of a new China. With this proliferation of new museums, are there trends that can be identified that might mark a paradigm shift in how the museum project is defined? Are there new roles - socially, culturally, politically - that the museum is playing? And what new architectural forms and spatial organizations are being invented to accommodate these new ambitions?