There are many cases of setting up museums in airports around the world. Taking Turkey as an example, since its official operation in July 2020, the Istanbul Airport Museum has attracted the attention of global travelers with its scale of more than 1,000 square meters and rich exhibits.
In contrast to the modern-style stores and squares in the airport terminal, classical portrait sculptures not only attract the attention of travelers, but also have navigation functions, guiding travelers to the museum area. The museum mainly displays precious cultural relics of Anatolian civilization. The collections span a wide range of time, from prehistoric times to Rome, Byzantium, and then to the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey. Representative exhibits include statues of Alexander the Great.
Airport Museums Promote the Development of Tourism
Turkish Minister of Culture and Tourism Ersoy said that the Istanbul Airport Museum is one of Turkey’s strategies to promote tourism, which will enhance people’s awareness of Anatolian civilization, especially transit passengers.
The head of the airport said: “We hope to upgrade this international transportation hub with excellent passenger services into a place of art and culture, and turn passengers’ attention to Turkish art and culture. With this museum, we can display the precious historical relics we have collected here.” The museum uses digital real-life technology to launch an online exhibition, allowing viewers to visit the museum online anytime and anywhere.
The San Francisco International Airport Museum in the United States was built in 1980 and was a pioneering airport exhibition project at the time. In 1999, the museum was certified by the American Alliance of Museums and is the only certified airport museum. The exhibition themes of the San Francisco International Airport Museum are very wide, including folk art, technology, history, food, clothing and popular culture, which are popular with passengers.
In addition, the airport museum will also exhibit foreign cultural works. At present, the museum is exhibiting the theme exhibition “The Elegance of Chinese Daily Ceramics”. The exhibits are mainly from practical utensils that traveled across the ocean with Chinese immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries, such as animal-shaped oil lamps, colorful hat racks, lively and cute guardian lions, blue and white porcelain, and quaint food storage jars.
Airport Museums Bring a New Cultural Experience
The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, is the first museum to open a branch in an airport, and it is located in Schiphol Airport. The airport museum is also one of the few museums in the world that displays authentic works of art from the Dutch Golden Age in the 17th century in an international terminal. All the artworks on display are from the authentic collection of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, presenting the unique charm of Dutch art and historical culture to passengers. In addition to museums, the Korean Traditional Culture Experience Hall at Incheon Airport in South Korea and the Doraemon Park at New Chitose Airport in Japan also use different art forms to bring new cultural experiences to airport passengers.
The cross-border integration of airport museums around the world reflects the deep integration of culture and tourism, especially in the framework of the integration of transportation and tourism, which expands the extension of the integration of culture and technology and promotes the innovative development of the tourism industry. Traditionally, airports and stations were just simple transportation hubs, but now they have become an important part of tourism and even one of the destinations for travelers.
Airport Museums Provide a New Model for Cultural Relics Protection
As the head of Istanbul Airport said: “I hope to impress passengers with the airport museum, leave an impression on them, and change their holiday travel routes with the cultural relics we exhibit in the museum.” This innovation of the airport museum not only enhances the vitality of traditional airports, but also makes the museum’s communication form more diversified. Museums are no longer limited to exhibitions fixed in the city center or specific areas, but use the flexibility of transportation venues to reach the crowd, and combine with local cultural heritage protection in accordance with local conditions to form a more open and diverse cultural communication model.
Airport museums also provide a new model for cultural relics protection. In the past, many cultural relics were often forced to move, but now, by setting up museums in transportation hubs such as airports, it can maximize the protection of cultural relics in situ and give full play to the greater display effect of cultural relics. In the future cultural communication and tourism development, we can learn from the model of airport museums, combine cultural relics or natural scenery with transportation hubs, and explore more new ways to promote the deep integration of urban social development and cultural functions.
