A rare Guan vase from the Southern Song Dynasty is displayed after it was bought by a museum in Shanghai. (Photo : REUTERS)
A curator of Shanghai Museum has announced Friday, Jan. 29, that it will open a second home in the Pudong New Area in 2020, Shanghai Daily reported.
Yang Zhigang said that the new venue has an area of 80,000 square meters, which is twice the size of the original in People's Square. It will be built close to the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum.
The two museums will be complementary, as the Puxi venue specialized in bronze and ceramics, while the Pudong site will host displays of paintings, calligraphy and other artwork.
The curator said that the Shanghai Museum, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary at its current site, receives about two million visitors a year.
"It has long been in need of a face-lift and will undergo a program of repairs later this year, though that won't affect its normal operations," according to Yang.
The People's Square building will close for a more extensive renovation when the new venue opens, Yang said.
Considered as one of China's first world-class modern museums, Shanghai Museum houses many relics of ancient Chinese art.
The museum is divided into eleven galleries and has three exhibition halls. The 11 galleries cover most of the major categories of Chinese art: ancient bronze, ancient ceramics, paintings, calligraphy, ancient sculpture, ancient jade, coins, Ming and Qing furniture, seals, and minority nationalities.
The museum features the bronze ware of the Shang and Zhou dynasties and has more than 400 pieces of exquisite bronze wares which describe the history of ancient Chinese bronze art.
Another treasure of the Shanghai Museum is the ancient ceramics collection with more than 500 pieces of artwork from various dynasties. These include the painted and gray pottery from the Neolithic age; primitive celadon from the Shang, Zhou and Warring States; mature celadon from the East Han Dynasty; the well-known tri-colored glazed pottery from the Tang Dynasty; as well as painted porcelain from the Song, Jin and Liao; and the brilliant works from Jingdezhen, Jiangxi, during the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties.
Chinese paintings and calligraphy as well as masterpieces from different periods and genres are also featured in the museum.
