Could this become one of China’s best museums? Sound Art Museum in Beijing gets off to a flying start with high-calibre exhibitions
- Visitors to the Sound Art Museum first encounter an exhibition that indexes historic Beijing sounds including street vendors, songbirds and fighting crickets
- The different exhibitions are deeply researched but accessibly presented, with some adding visuals and vibrations to the mix
Though Beijing’s new Sound Art Museum is located in the suburban artist village of Songzhuang, the sounds of the city’s downtown hutongs fill the sprawling complex, which opened on May 19.
Visitors first encounter a permanent exhibition titled “The Sound of Old Beijing”, which indexes historic sounds including street vendors, songbirds and fighting crickets.
In another section, visitors are asked to provide recordings of their favourite sounds of the city, since the team behind this unusual museum are aware of how rapidly things can go from ubiquitous to extinct in the fast-changing country.
“The sound of pigeons wearing elaborate whistles while flying in the sky is totally unique to Beijing, and a sound which is fast disappearing,” says the museum’s co-founder, Colin Siyuan Chinnery, an artist, curator and musician long active in China’s alternative arts scene.
“We will have a pigeon coop on the roof starting this autumn, and every day visitors can experience the amazing sound of pigeon whistles up close, while viewing vistas of the surrounding area.”
The Sound Art Museum “could be anywhere in the world, but Beijing is my home”, says Chinnery, who has largely lived in the city since childhood.
