Mobile museum aesthetics education transcends the physical constraints of traditional aesthetics education by extending aesthetic immersion into social spaces such as communities and schools through flexible spatial forms. This approach promotes localized and inclusive aesthetics education, reshaping the symbiotic relationship between art and life. By integrating participatory art education methods, it fosters innovative cognitive approaches and cultivates individuals with aesthetic judgment and cultural agency. This chapter presents six exemplary case studies, showcasing the diverse forms and social value of mobile museum aesthetics education.

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The collaborative museum-school-community project between the Chongqing China Three Gorges Museum and Sichuan Fine Arts Institute established a multi-stakeholder mechanism involving museum curators, academic researchers, and community educators. This initiative transformed museum exhibitions into engaging community aesthetics activities, facilitating dynamic knowledge production and dissemination while promoting the popularisation and innovation of cultural resources. The “Life Memorial Book” project, conducted in natural history museums and zoos, designed an interdisciplinary curriculum integrating biology and art based on the unique characteristics of multiple venues, exemplifying the comprehensive content of mobile museum aesthetics education. The “Echo Conch” project combined the content of artist Zhang Enli’s exhibition with specific community contexts, focusing on the mental health of youth and transforming art museum resources into tools for emotional healing. The “Family Tree” project emphasised the conceptual presentation of art museums, guiding children from creating family trees to producing community murals, enhancing their individual cognition, family connections, and sense of community identity. This initiative transformed communities into “open-air art galleries,” highlighting the role of mobile museum aesthetics education in fostering emotional connections and social cohesion. The art research and learning activity from Anyue to Dazu Stone Carvings established cultural foundational knowledge through preparatory courses, reinforced spatial awareness through on-site learning, and internalised knowledge through post-trip curatorial practices, demonstrating a potential pathway for the modern educational transformation of museum cultural heritage. The “Young Curator” project by A4 Art Museum, an exemplary case of children’s participatory art education, engaged children in issue-based inquiries, field investigations, program design, and public exhibitions centered on environmental themes. The art museum was transformed into a laboratory for social practice, illustrating the diverse applications of mobile museums in children’s education.

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These cases collectively reflect the multifaceted impact of mobile museum aesthetics education. In the spatial dimension, they construct a flexible educational network connecting physical museum spaces, transitional areas, and social contexts. In the dimension of knowledge production, they establish a dynamic mechanism for transforming professional resources into public knowledge and individual experiences. In the dimension of educational value, they achieve a functional upgrade from cultural dissemination to social innovation. By leveraging its mobility, mobile museum aesthetics education deconstructs the overly centralized structure of cultural resources, fostering culturally conscious modern citizens through dynamic knowledge sharing.

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Section 1: Concept, Characteristics, Principles, and Scope of Mobile Museum Aesthetics Education

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1. Concept of Mobile Museum Aesthetics Education

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Mobile museum aesthetics education centers on museum cultural resources, extending aesthetic practices into social settings such as communities, schools, and families through spatial mobility. Utilizing methods like participatory art creation, it seeks to activate cultural heritage, enhance public aesthetic literacy, and foster social cohesion. As previously noted, the core functions of museums encompass collection, research, and education. The inherent public nature of museums has driven their transformation from “custodians of objects” to “cultural enablers.” Today, education is a pivotal mission of museums, with aesthetics education emphasizing the cultivation of emotional engagement and aesthetic refinement among audiences. While traditional museum-based aesthetics education remains prevalent, its reliance on fixed venues creates physical and psychological barriers to public engagement. In contrast, mobile museum aesthetics education offers distinct advantages by leveraging spatial flexibility, contextual adaptation, and knowledge reconfiguration to create dynamic social education scenarios, vividly embodying the public essence of museums. For example, in community activities, it can integrate residents’ oral histories and local cultural symbols to form interactive cultural narratives. In school settings, it can align with curricula to develop interdisciplinary, project-based learning modules using cultural resources, fostering enhanced resource integration among museums, schools, communities, and families.

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Tracing the history of museums in China, the prototype of mobile museums dates back to the Republican era, initially aimed at addressing regional disparities in cultural resource distribution. Evolving from the simple transport of artifacts and textual information to the introduction of interactive exhibition and educational equipment, and now to customized local content and community integration, mobile museums have shifted from cultural display to educational empowerment and from unidirectional “cultural supplementation” to bidirectional “value co-creation.” Currently, two prevalent operational models exist in China: the hierarchical touring model, exemplified by the Guangdong Mobile Museum, which uses standardized exhibition modules (artifacts, specimens, or panels) to tour museums and schools while providing supporting educational services; and the embedded service model, represented by the “Cultural Caravan” of the Sichuan Museum and Inner Mongolia Museum, which employs large vehicles as mobile platforms to embed micro-museums directly into communities and rural areas, offering in-depth cultural services (Zhong, 2022). Mobile museum aesthetics education, a recent development, extends beyond exhibition formats to create dynamic aesthetics classrooms, transforming cultural resources into participatory and experiential art practices. This involves not only the physical mobility of exhibits but also the creative transformation of museum knowledge and methods. For instance, in the “Echo Conch” case, activity designers distilled concepts from artist Zhang Enli’s exhibition and adapted them into tools for community emotional healing. Similarly, the “Young Curator” project applied museum curatorial thinking as a method for children’s aesthetics education, demonstrating the flexible application of cultural resources across diverse contexts.

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In the era of digital intelligence, the mobility of museum aesthetics education will be further enhanced, raising questions about balancing technological empowerment and humanistic values. Technologies like AR or VR can create “hyper-physical spaces,” extending the spatial and temporal dimensions of education, but may lack the authentic emotional connections of offline interactions. AI can facilitate personalized learning paths for mobile museums but risks introducing algorithmic biases. Achieving synergy between virtual and physical realms and between human and machine collaboration will be a key focus for the future of mobile museum aesthetics education.

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References
Zhong, Z. B. (2022). The path of public cultural services of Guangdong Mobile Museum. Journal of Cultural Relics, (1), 83–90.