Shanghai Museum, established in 1952, is a large-scale museum for displaying the diversity of antiques and the delicacy of quality of China’s ancient art. The present buidling of Shanghai Museum was finally completed in 1996. It is located in the south of People's Square. The museum covers 2800 square meters and more than one million peices of collections are quite well preserved in the museum, among which, 13,000 pieces are rare and valuable as national treasures.
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the whole building of Shanghai Museum | Da ke Ding(大克鼎)----the most important exhibit in Shanghai Museum |
Before you enter into Shanghai Museum, please pay attention to the design of the whole construction. It is shaped with a square base and a round top attached with arches like a bronze Ding(鼎), indicating the ancient Chinese philosophy of the universe that the earth is square while the sky is round,(天圆地方in Chinese).
Inside of the buiding, there are four storey.It is generally divided into Ancient Chinese Bronze Gallery, Ancient Chinese Sculpture Gallery and No.1 Exhibition Hall on the first floor; Ancient Chinese Ceramics Gallery and No.2 Exhibition on the second floor; Chinese Painting Gallery,Chinese Calligraphy Gallery and Chinese Seal Gallery on the third floor; Chinese Minority Nationalities' Art Gallery, Ancient Chinese Jade Gallery, Chinese Ming and Qing Furniture Gallery,Chinese Currency Gallery,Display of Ancient Silk Road Coins and No.3 Exhibition Hall on the Fourth floor.Besides important exhibitions in the mainland,some successful exhibitions have been done in Hong Kong, America and Japan such as Bronze Exhibition, Six-Thousand-Year Art Display of China, Rare Chinese Porcelain Display, Calligraphy Exhibition of Ming and Qing Dynasties, Display of Yangzhou Eight-Masters, Display on Liberator’s Study in later Ming Dynasty. Therefore, Shanghai Museum is world-renowned for its fine and rare collections of a large number of artistic heritages.
Among all the collections, Shanghai Museum features on Bronze, Ceramics, paintings and calligraphy. The bronze in Shanghai Museum are famous and antique, which were collected by several great collectors of the late Qing Dynasty who lived in the south of Yangtze River;The Ceramics in Shanghai Museum are those great ones discovered or well preserved in the south of Yangtze River, for example, the crockery with elaborate engraving made in the pre-historical period is a rare and invaluable antique and precious celadon is also another unique feature which makes the museum vary from other museums in China; The collection of traditional paintings are considered to cover half of antique paintings in China;In calligraphy, there is Yatouwantie which was created by Wang Xianzhi, a great calligrapher in Eastern Jin Dynasty (317 - 420), and whose father Wang Xizi was one of the greatest masters in calligraphy.There are also extractive, systematic, and representative scrolling and paintings created by calligraphers and painters in Ming and Qing Dynasties. The old coin collection is the largest one in China. Its collection of seal tops the rest in China too.  |  |
A Buddhist in red from the western Regions--Zhao Mengfu | Ancient Chinese money |
Shanghai Museum is equipped with advanced fire and safe protection equipments, electrical education equipments, the computer management system of antique and rare book documents, building-automatization management system, equipments of automatization-control on humidity and temperature in gallery and depot. What have also been established is the Lecture Hall of Shanghai Museum, which is used for academic report, and some special rooms for study and research. Apart from that, some exported system of simultaneous interpretation and visual and audio systems also have been assembled. All of these equipments offer good touring environment for visitors and help to improve the cultural taste of Shanghai as an international metropolis.
