On October 26th, 2012, The New York Time published an article named “Once on Fringe, Performance Art is Embraced”. In the article, Robin Pogrebin (2012) claims that, performance art is no longer a marginal or fringe art, but a staple of mainstream museum programming. No matter in western museums or eastern museums, a large number of performance art is introduced. What is more, performance art is even presented as the core part of exhibition. In this way, this paper focuses on researching the phenomenon that more and more contemporary museums introduce performance art and present performance art as the major part of contemporary art event. On one hand, the medium material extends from a thing to image and body, artists constantly use various materials even they own body to create. On the other hand, museum gradually becomes a place for cultural production from a place for collecting and displaying. From the phenomenon, people could find that the functionality of new museums increases greatly, and exhibition has become a dynamic process rather than static display. Audiences’ keen on experience also promotes the change of the relationship between audience and performer.

Art is constantly updating, medium materials are changing, and the museums are evolving at the same time. Experts argue that, the earth has fully entered into a total new geologic epoch, anthropocene. Human’s activity is so important in nowadays, which means that it is a significant task for modern museums to research audiences’ demand in experience and interaction. Consequently, through exploring the development direction and development logic of performance art, the paper could provide useful enlightenment and suggestions for museums to adjust mechanisms and development directions.

Generally, this paper firstly introduces key conceptual and theoretical ideas in term of performance art. Specifically, the concept of performance art and relevant theories are introduced in the paper. Furthermore, it describes the methods used in the research, including interviews with audience who visit museums, managers in the museums, certain performance artists, as well as analysis of performance art. After that, this paper reports the findings from the interviews and the analysis. In addition, it provides certain suggestions for the further development of museums in order to meet the new demands produced in the new era. Finally, it draws out some more general conclusions. In general, as experience is extremely important for the audiences in new museums, and performance artists also seek to make their audiences gain special experience from their performance. Therefore, the combination of performance art and museum could refresh people’s awareness and understanding on art, and makes people know art is the essence of life.