Upon walking into museums, visitors are greeted by an array of elegantly arranged objects from diverse eras and locales, each mirroring an orderly world or a relationship. Within this realm, such objects, now now designated as "collections", assume a distinctive place and value - this constitutes "the third scene" of history.
Xu Xiaoxiao begins her discourse by tracing the origin of the museum back to its primitive form, the "Cabinet of Curiosities". By reflecting on the transformation of museum exhibition paradigms, she proposes that the essence of a museum acts as a mirror reflecting the "world". She then made an in-depth analysis of museum concepts such as "object and space". Xu contends that when confronting a history that has become "akin to a foreign land", we are compelled to position ourselves within the "third scene" that connects reality and fantasy, subjective and objective worlds, to construct the relationship between objects and individuals, and between humanity and the world. Regardless of the evolutions that museums may undergo in the present or future, we must never lose sight of their paramount purpose—to bestow upon us spiritual solace and nourishment for the soul.
