With the generous support from the Bei Shan Tang Foundation, the Art Museum held the Fifth Museum Professionals Training Workshop in March. Co-organised by the National Research Institute of Maritime Cultural Heritage, Korea, for the second year, this year's workshop was themed "Exhibition Planning and Education". Like the previous workshop, the training was structured in the form of "lecture + micro-exhibition proposal + field trip". Twenty mid-career museum professionals from mainland China and Hong Kong participated in and benefited from the sharing of and exchange with seasoned specialists from museums worldwide in two weeks.

Five museum experts from home and abroad were invited as guest speakers this year: Prof. Chi Jo-Hsin from Taiwan, former Visiting Scholar at the Department of Fine Arts and the Art Museum, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, who has long been supporting the workshop; Dr. Jay Xu, Director and CEO of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco; and Dr. Zhixin Sun, Brooke Russell Astor Curator of Chinese Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (the MET). Prof. Chi analysed the Hong Kong Museum of History's Silk Road Exhibition from the angle of a visitor, focusing in particular on the use of multimedia; Dr. Xu discussed the history, collections and exhibitions of his museum, concluding that "a good exhibition is to tell a good story"; Dr. Sun shared the detailed work flow of the exhibition, "Age of Empires: Chinese Art of the Qin and Han Dynasties", which took place at the MET last year.

Local speakers talked about their education programmes. Dr. Raymond Tang, Curator (Hong Kong Art) of Hong Kong Museum of Art, shared his experience of carrying out "the Museum of Art on Wheels", which was established due to the museum's renovation; Dr. Lesley Lau, Director of the Art Promotion Office, introduced a wide range of outreach programmes of Oi!, and brought up the question of how a museum could connect with the young members of the community.

Apart from their lectures, Prof. Chi, Dr. Sun, and Dr. Tang participated in the session "A Dialogue with Veterans". Moderated by Prof. Josh Yiu, Director of the Art Museum, the guests exchanged their thoughts on the function and role of museum education, as well as on the communication between educators and curators. The enthusiastic responses from the participants showed that a 3-hour session was never enough for such a fruitful discussion.

As for the Korean visit, a Chinese-Korean Museum Professionals Exchange Forum was again co-organised with the National Research Institute of Maritime Cultural Heritage. With the theme of museum education, two representatives from each side shared about their own museum's education programmes targeting children and teenagers and the application of multimedia in exhibitions. Among the museum visits in Korea, participants were especially impressed by the National Museum of Korea. The educators there guided us through their education centre and Children's Museum. They also delivered a presentation on education programmes with different target audience and prepared education materials for us. The participants all found the visit very rewarding.

The mission of the Museum Professionals Training Workshop is to foster communication between senior museum practitioners and their younger counterparts, and to connect museums in Greater China with the world. We sincerely hope that future workshops will continue to be well supported to contribute to the development of the museum profession and the promotion of Chinese art.