A visitor lingers at the exhibition "Encounters: Southeast Asian Art in Singapore Art Museum Collection" at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing.

Some 20 art museum directors from across China voiced their concerns at a special forum, which was designed to attract more people to art institutions. Some directors complained about the shortage of funds, unqualified staff members, and lack of favourable policies and support from the government.

However, the biggest problem was the fading appeal of art museums to the general public, revealed Gao Yun, director of Jiangsu Art Museum. "With China's opening up and rapid economic development, people have more and more choices for their leisure time and have demonstrated an increasingly stronger purchasing power in cultural and arts products. Against this exciting backdrop, however, China's art museums, especially the State-owned ones, are gradually being marginalized."

Although private art galleries and museums are mushrooming in China, art museums financed by public funds are still playing a key role, Gao said.

However, for decades, Chinese art museums have assumed a wrong position serving mainly the artists and artistic communities.

Together, the artists and art museums should "serve the people" if they really want their art to be understood, appreciated, purchased, collected and remembered by the huge population of Chinese audiences, Gao said.

"The ideal situation for a Chinese art museum is that, with its popularity growing, visitors flock to much hyped shows, to extended hours and added programming like movies, concerts, and dance parties, and to retail stores and cafes," Gao said.

"More than just a temple to art, an art museum could also become social destinations and community centres, places to hang out with kids or meet a date."

To win audiences from concerts, cinemas and theme parks, art museums should seek to strengthen its marketing muscle, renew its curatorial ways, to improve its display schemes, and to present visitor-friendly facilities and innovative designs, and to enrich its art collection, pointed out Qian Laizhong, director of Sichuan Art Museum.

Over the past few years, Qian's art museum has successfully won the heart of audiences in Chengdu and neighbouring areas in Southwest China's Sichuan Province by staging art shows addressing social hotspots such as the conflict between urban redevelopment and preservation of cultural heritages, the mobile technologies and daily living, bestselling books, cartoon movies and graphic design.

Liu Haisu Art Museum in East China's Shanghai has set up part-time art training classes, and launched serial lectures on art history and art collection to lure visitors, said museum director Zhang Peicheng.

"The fast-changing contemporary Chinese metropolises have actually provided an unprecedented arena for artists and art works today," Zhang said.

"Art is everywhere in the life of urban Chinese. Chinese art museums should take initiative to organize fine arts-related events in various public spaces, such as the parks, the metro stations, office buildings and even shopping malls, instead of waiting at home for visitors."

With Chinese people's lives improving and their purchasing power growing, the prices of art works on the Chinese art markets have been soaring in recent years, said Fan Di'an, director of National Art Museum of China.

As a result, "that makes it extremely difficult for art museums in China to acquire art works at auctions given a very limited sum of fund for art purchasing, collecting and conservation."

Anyway, "the situation is changing," said An Yuanyuan, an official with the Art Market Management Division of the Ministry of Culture .

Beginning in 2006, the central government has set up a special fund to allocate a sum of 20 million yuan (US$2.5 million) every year to partly foot the bill for acquisition of art works by the National Art Museum of China, according to An.

And local governments are encouraged to set up similar funds to help State-owned art museums in different provinces and regions better serve their patronages the taxpayers, she said.

However, another nagging issue remains to be tackled, pointed out Yu Ding, a professor with Central Academy of Fine Arts .

"China now has only few administrative regulations concerning the art businesses. The lack of an official art law severely hinders the healthy growth of China's art market," said Yu, who has recently made a comparative study on the art policies and art museum management in China and the United States.

For example, at present, no specific laws, such as tax break, are in place to encourage private collectors to donate works from their collections to the art museums on the Chinese mainland, Yu said.

Editor: Lency