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This research aims to probe into the art practice of Li Mei-shu Memorial Gallery (hereinafter referred to as ‘the Gallery’) in Sanxia District, and how the Gallery shaped its conditions to conform to the essence of a community museum. Being a local resident, who has been touched by the Gallery’s long-term promotion of artistic and cultural activities, such as introducing art exhibitions into communities, in Sanxia District, the researcher chose the course of the Gallery’s art practice as the foundation to identify the values of the Gallery’s community activities and influence upon participants, to explore the gradual shift of Gallery’s identification, i.e. from a private memorial gallery to a community museum, and to understand the feedback as well as expectations from local community inhabitants in terms of the Gallery’s practice. Since the Gallery had gradually paved its way from a local cultural hall to become a community museum via hosting art festivals, providing teaching-learning activities as well as experiences and introducing art into local schools as extension education, this research chose two of the Gallery’s art practices as the research approach, employed the course of the Mei-shu Month as the foundation for discussion and implemented several research methods, such as field observation, actual participation, interviews, etc., to explore how the Mei-shu Month’s exhibitions and extension events & activities have been curated from 2012 up till 2019 and to discuss the orientation and value of Mei-shu Month accordingly. In addition, the researcher also incorporated the 2018 cultural experience project into the research and analyzed the cooperation among the Gallery, local schools and the local residents who have participated in order to discuss the outcome and influence. Departing from the course of the aforementioned two art practices, the researcher adopted two roles, voluntary worker and local resident, during this research and interviewed local residents for feedback upon the Gallery in order to discuss the connection between arts and communities, and the vision of making use of education to promote arts. This research is expected to show how a community museum has been created and how arts can be promoted by carefully going through how Li Mei-shu Memorial Gallery implemented its artistic actions. It is also expected that there will be more follow-up research probing into the energy and potential of Sanxia District’s artistic and cultural development in the future. |