Shanghai Museum

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Shanghai Museum

The Shanghai Museum (Chinese:上海博物館) is a museum of ancient Chinese art, situated on the People's Square in the Huangpu District of Shanghai, People's Republic of China.

1 History
2 Current building
3 Collections
4 External links

[edit] History

1952: Museum founded and first open to the public in the former Shanghai Racecourse club house, now at 325 W. Nanjing Road.
1959: Museum moved into the former Zhonghui Building at 16 S. Henan Road, which previously housed insurance companies and bank offices.
1992: Museum allocated a piece of land on People's Square by the Shanghai municipal government, as its new site.

[edit] Current building

Westerner on a camel, Tang dynasty, Shanghai Museum.

Construction of the current building started in August 1993. It was inaugurated in October 12, 1996. It is 29.5 meters high with five floors, covering a total area of 39,200 m².

Designed by a local architect, the new museum building is designed in the shape of an ancient, bronze, tripod cooking vessel called a ding. It is said that the inspiration for the design was specifically provided by the Da Ke Ding, now on exhibit in the museum. The building has round top and a square base, symbolising the ancient Chinese perception of the world as "round sky, square earth".

[edit] Collections

The museum has a collection of over 120,000 pieces, including bronze, ceramics, calligraphy, furniture, jades, ancient coins, paintings, seals, sculptures, minority art and foreign art. It has eleven galleries and three special temporary exhibition halls. The permanent galleries are:

Gallery of Ancient Chinese Bronze
Gallery of Ancient Chinese Sculpture
Gallery of Ancient Chinese Ceramics
Gallery of Ancient Chinese Jades
Gallery of Ancient Chinese Paintings
Gallery of Ancient Chinese Calligraphy
Gallery of Ancient Chinese Seals
Gallery of Ancient Chinese Numismatics
Gallery of Chinese Furniture in Ming and Qing dynasties
Gallery of Arts and Crafts by Chinese Minorities

The Shanghai Museum houses several items of national importance, including one of three extant specimens of a "transparent" bronze mirror from the Han Dynasty.

Jar with modeled figurines, Kingdom of Wu, 222-280 CE.	Jar of the Western Jin Dynasty, with Buddhist figures, 265-317 CE.	Westerner on a camel (detail). Tang Dynasty.	Tang Dynasty jar.
A classic tri-color glazed Tang Dynasty horse, using yellow, green and white colors, from the Shanghai Art Museum.	Tang Dynasty woman, Shanghai Art Museum.