is the first time that a Chinese official museum has cooperated with the Egyptian government. The "Top of the Pyramid: Ancient Egyptian Civilization Exhibition" being held by the Shanghai Museum is one of the most watched cultural exhibitions in the country this summer. It has been "full moon" since the opening of this exhibition on July 19. What is the result?
Statistics from Shanghai Bo show that the exhibition received a total of 317,444 visitors in the first month, including 221,358 visitors from outside Shanghai, accounting for 69.7%. More than 7 of these foreign visitors came to Shanghai specifically for this special exhibition. The cultural exhibition also stimulated enthusiasm for cultural consumption: nearly half of the visitors expressed the intention to or have already spent money in the surrounding area, with an average consumption (or willingness to spend) of 1,684.19 yuan; foreign visitors stayed in Shanghai for an average of 3.59 days, with an average total expenditure of 4,255.55 yuan.
What is the attraction of the exhibition?
"This exhibition is as hot as the weather in the Yangtze River Delta this summer!" Last weekend, Mr. Song, who came all the way from Changzhou, Jiangsu, to Shanghai to see this exhibition, said with emotion, luckily he turned on the alarm on his mobile phone for the first time Grab tickets and make reservations all at once. "If you turn on your phone and hesitate for a moment, the reservation quota will be empty."
At present, the daily passenger flow of the Shanghai People's Square Pavilion has reached the upper limit of 11,000-12,000 people. In order to meet the audience's expectations for the exhibition, Shanghai Expo will open night shows every Tuesday to Friday, with opening hours from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. On Saturday night, the "Museum Meow Night Event" which can accommodate 2,000 spectators and 200 special "cat spectators" will be launched.
On social media, the popularity of this exhibition is also high: when it was launched, the exhibition ranked first in the "Top Ten Hot Searched Exhibitions" on the Zhongbo hot search list. In the second quarter of the opening of the exhibition, the "Zhongbo Hot Search List" Shanghai Museum of Art ranks first among the "Top Ten Popular Museums in the Country". Topics related to this exhibition have been circulated online by more than 1.2 billion, and Xiaohongshu alone has exceeded 100 million exposures and more than 810,000 interactions.
backend data and audience sampling survey statistics show that among the more than 300,000 viewers in the first month, the male to female ratio was 4:6; viewers aged 0-22 accounted for 29.11%, and viewers aged 22-40 were the "absolute main force", accounting for 43.17%, viewers aged 40-50 accounted for 17.78%, and viewers aged 50 and above accounted for 9.94%. In the opinion of industry insiders, this data distribution shows that the Egyptian exhibition is "attractive to both men, women, and children."
Where does the attraction come from? "The ancient Egyptian civilization is very mysterious. You can see so many cultural relics that could only be seen in books and TV in the past without going abroad. It's great value for money." Mr. Du, an audience member who came to Shanghai from Chongqing to see the exhibition, visited Shanghai Expo. One day, "The exquisiteness and imagination of those stone carvings are amazing." He especially liked the design of the huge sculptures of two generations of pharaohs facing each other in the "Era of Tutankhamun".
In addition to the two special exhibitions "The Age of Tutankhamun" and "The Secret of Saqqara", this exhibition also includes a general history exhibition of ancient Egypt called "The Kingdom of the Pharaohs". "First understand the basic situation of ancient Egypt in the 'Pharaoh's Country', and then develop an independent narrative around the character of Tutankhamun and the area of Saqqara. It can be said that it is somewhat informative and gives people a better understanding of this magical ancient civilization. A relatively complete understanding," said Mr. Xu, a cultural enthusiast. At present, most domestic and international exhibitions on ancient Egyptian civilization are borrowed from European and American museums and narrated from a Western perspective. However, this exhibition is borrowed from Egypt, and the curatorial ideas reflect this. The research results of Chinese scholars. "For example, the 'Kingdom of the Pharaohs' exhibition hall has a special section that talks about the literati and scribes of ancient Egypt. It also displays rubbings of ancient Egyptian stone tablets made by Chinese in the Qing Dynasty. You can feel the mutual sympathy between ancient civilizations."
School of Liberal Arts, Shanghai University Professor Guo Dantong of the Department of History summarized the value of this exhibition into three aspects: exchanges and mutual learning among civilizations, science popularization and academic exchanges. "The audience has a certain understanding of ancient Egyptian civilization from the general to the special, and it can also stimulate young people's interest in learning. For researchers, the latest archaeological discoveries at Saqqara are good research objects."
"Egypt The exhibition does not only look at Egyptian things, but allows us to jump from the cultural background we are familiar with to another culture to experience how people from different times and cultures behave."Pu Muzhou, Chair Professor and Emeritus Professor of the Department of History at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, believes that people need to understand the world beyond what they know, which is the meaning of museum exhibitions.
It is not easy to achieve such a goal. Chief Curator of the Exhibition Yan Haiying, a professor at the Department of History at Peking University, recalled that he originally wanted to have “a special exhibition with a hundred cultural relics,” but Shanghai Expo insisted on making it a large exhibition “to transform our research results into popular culture. Conversion skills required. Cultural relics suitable for exhibition must not only have high academic value, but also fully consider ornamental value and tell a good story. "To this end, Shanghai Exhibition Center and the curatorial team negotiated and negotiated with the Egyptian side many times, and there were even situations where the talks almost failed. In the end, they succeeded because of persistence. What economic effects did
bring?
As popular as the exhibition, there are The cultural and creative products launched in conjunction with this exhibition have been sold for nearly 45 million yuan in one month. In the past year, the sales volume of this exhibition was approximately 50 million yuan. Currently, more than 1,000 cultural and creative products have been developed for this exhibition. More than 700 models have been launched, triggering a buying boom among the audience: Tmall data shows that cultural and creative products at Shanghai Exhibition were sold out four times a month, and online store transactions increased by 465% year-on-year. Yesterday, a cultural and creative pop-up store with the theme of the Ancient Egyptian Civilization Exhibition opened on Huaihai Road. Taking advantage of the popularity of the exhibition, Shanghai Expo helped cultivate new consumption scenarios. On the occasion of the launch of the first "Shanghai Summer" international consumption season, it cooperated with well-known enterprises. , key business districts, etc. to guide and meet the consumption needs of the audience. The audience can not only take the "Shanghai Expo" ancient Egypt theme cruise ship, travel from the "Nile" in the museum to the real Huangpu River, but also enjoy the cooperation with China Eastern Airlines. "Air tickets + tickets" and other special package products are jointly created with Nanjing Road Pedestrian Street, Huaihai Middle Road-Xintiandi Street, Yuyuan Mall and other key business districts to create a new one-stop business travel and cultural exhibition experience scene, and also launched the "One Ticket to Enjoy Huangpu". " and other linkage activities; in the future, Shanghaibo will also cooperate with Jiushi Sports to launch linkages between the world's top sports events and exhibition tickets.
Shanghaibo is also trying to enrich new consumer experiences. In addition to the Metaverse exhibition hall "The Lost Pharaoh" supporting the exhibition: In addition to the popularity of "Khufu's Pyramid Immersive Exploration Experience Exhibition", Shanghai Expo teamed up with Ctrip, China Eastern Airlines and the accommodation industry to create a "pet-friendly" flight, hotel and museum visit experience, which received enthusiastic response and widespread praise. The wonders of the museum Once the "Meow" Night event was launched, the search volume for pet-friendly hotels around People's Square increased by more than 50% year-on-year. The economic effect brought by the continued popularity of
exhibition is not only the hot sales of cultural and creative products, but also the obvious spillover effect of business travel, culture and sports. Data released by Shanghai Expo shows that more than 70% of the foreign visitors who came to watch the exhibition came to Shanghai specifically for this special exhibition, and another 20% came to Shanghai as the main purpose. Among the foreign visitors came from Jiangsu and Zhejiang There are many places such as Beijing and Anhui.
In the view of Chu Xiaobo, director of the Shanghai Museum, behind the outstanding first report card of the exhibition, in addition to the wonderful content of the exhibition itself, it is also inseparable from the spiritual character of the city of Shanghai. The charm and attraction are inseparable from the strong culture and art consumption atmosphere that Shanghai has formed over the years, as well as the series of innovative measures launched by Shanghai to create high-quality development and stimulate cultural vitality.
In response to the difficulty in purchasing tickets, Shanghai Bo reminds. , the ticket purchase channel for the next month will be opened from 12:00 on the 1st of each month. Visitors who plan to visit the exhibition can purchase tickets in time on the Shanghai Exhibition Reservation Mini Program. In fact, exhibition tickets are not what some people on social media have said. It is said that "Second Sky" is "unobtainable". Tickets for the September exhibition, which opened on August 1, were sold out within 5 days. It is not difficult for the audience to buy tickets in time.
text/Jian Gongbo
editor/Ni Jianing
