Hasta La Ideas

A rendering of the Himalayas Art Museum’s new home in Shanghai.

The Himalayas Art Museum is taking crowdsourcing to the extreme. The Shanghai-based institution, which in 2009 changed its name from the Zendai Museum of Modern Art, has launched a global contest to find its new logo—and, uh, plan its future. “…[T]he museum is not simply searching for a logo design, but for your vision for the future of the institution,” notes the call for entries. “What are your hopes and desires? What challenges do you think we will face? These are the questions we must ask as we move forward in new directions. Thus, we hope to have a logo that will adequately transmit this vision of a new institutional format in a global context.” Say what? As best we can discern, the idea is to channel those “hopes and desires” into an “eye-catching, simple, original, and creative” logo that embodies the theme of “Himalayas for the Future” while communicating the museum’s “keywords”: “continuity, innovation, diversity (multicultural), nature, environmentally conscious.” Oh, and be sure to include the museum’s name in both English and Chinese. Up for grabs is €10,000 (about $14,000 at current exchange) and a trip to Shanghai, among other prizes. The deadline for entries is April 30, which gives the Himalayas Art Museum just over a month to call off the contest, take a cue from New York’s Rubin Museum of Art, and hire Milton Glaser to design an identity that will look to the future of the Himalayas and stand the test of time.

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