上海博物馆 | |
Location within Shanghai | |
Established | 1952 [1] [2] |
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Location | 201 Renmin Avenue, People's Square, Shanghai, 200003 [3] |
Coordinates | 31°13′49″N121°28′14″E / 31.230278°N 121.470556°E |
Visitors | 2,109,200 (2017) [4] |
Director | Ma Chengyuan (1985–99) |
Public transit access | People's Square Station on Lines 1, 2, and 8 (Shanghai Metro) |
Website | shanghaimuseum.net |
Shanghai Museum | |||||||||||||||
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Simplified Chinese | 上海博物馆 | ||||||||||||||
Traditional Chinese | 上海博物館 | ||||||||||||||
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The Shanghai Museum is a municipal public museum of ancient Chinese art,situated on the People's Square in the Huangpu District of Shanghai,China. It is funded by the Shanghai Municipal Culture and Tourism Bureau.
Rebuilt at its current location in 1996,it is famous for its large collection of rare cultural pieces.
The museum was founded in 1952 and was first open to the public in the former Shanghai Racecourse club house,now at 325 West Nanjing Road. [5] The founding collections came principally from three sources:a batch of artifacts gathered by the Communist 3rd Field Army during the civil war from accidental finds and confiscations of private property and brought to Shanghai upon the Communists' conquest of the city;artifacts confiscated by the customs service;items sold by private collectors due to political pressure during political purges and purchased by the government. The former Shanghai Municipal Museum was also merged into the new Shanghai Museum.
In the next few years,the museum's collections were further enriched from other private and institutional collections in Shanghai,including the collection of the former Shanghai Museum of the Royal Asiatic Society,which were moved to the museum as "foreign" institutions gradually left the city in the 1950s. In 1959 the museum moved into the Zhonghui Building at 16 South Henan Road,which housed insurance companies and bank offices. [1] [2] During the metal-gathering campaign of the Great Leap Forward,the Shanghai Museum participated in rescuing bronzeware from metal that had been confiscated or donated and were sent to be melted down. Before the Cultural Revolution,a tradition formed whereby Shanghai's wealthy collectors would make annual donations to the museum.
The museum's work largely halted as a result of the Cultural Revolution. After the end of the revolution,as one of China's most important museums,the collections have continued to be enriched with the fruit of donations,government purchases,and important finds from archaeological excavations.
The growth of its collections put enormous pressure on the cramped premises. For his role in ensuring a large,purpose-built home,it is said that Shanghai Museum owes much of its current existence to Ma Chengyuan,its director from 1985 until his retirement in 1999. When a new museum was omitted from Shanghai's five-year reconstruction plan in 1992,Ma lobbied Mayor Huang Ju for its rebuilding. After seeing the dilapidated rooms of the Zhonghui Building,Huang agreed to allocate a prime site on the People's Square,but the museum had to raise its own building funds. [6] [7] Ma raised US$25 million by leasing the old building to a Hong Kong developer. He also made many trips abroad to solicit donations,mainly from the Shanghai diaspora who had fled to Hong Kong after the Communist revolution,raising another $10 million. The money still ran short,but he eventually won another 140 million yuan from the city government to complete the building. [6]
Construction of the current building started in August 1993. It was inaugurated on October 12,1996 [1] to wide acclaim. [7] It is 29.5 meters high with five floors,covering a total area of 39,200 m2. [1]
Designed by local architect Xing Tonghe, [2] the building is designed in the shape of an ancient bronze 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 a round top and a square base,symbolizing the ancient Chinese perception of the world as "round sky,square earth" (Chinese:天圆地方 [8] ).
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. The Shanghai Museum houses several items of national importance,including one of three extant specimens of a "transparent" bronze mirror from the Han Dynasty.
It has eleven galleries and three special temporary exhibition halls. The permanent galleries are: [9]
The Museum has an important collection of ancient coins from the Silk Road,donated since 1991 by Linda and Roger Doo. The collection contains 1783 pieces from the Greeks to the Mongol Empire. [10]
The National Palace Museum is a museum in the capital Taipei, Taiwan. It has a permanent collection of nearly 700,000 pieces of Chinese artifacts and artworks, many of which were moved from the Palace Museum in the Forbidden City as well as five other institutions in mainland China during the ROC retreat. These collections had been transferred to several locations before finally being established in 1965 at its present location in Shilin, Taipei. The museum building itself was built between March 1964 and August 1965, with many subsequent expansions making it one of the largest of its type in the world.
Chinese art is visual art that originated in or is practiced in China, Greater China or by Chinese artists. Art created by Chinese residing outside of China can also be considered a part of Chinese art when it is based on or draws on Chinese culture, heritage, and history. Early "Stone Age art" dates back to 10,000 BC, mostly consisting of simple pottery and sculptures. After that period, Chinese art, like Chinese history, was typically classified by the succession of ruling dynasties of Chinese emperors, most of which lasted several hundred years. The Palace Museum in Beijing and the National Palace Museum in Taipei contains extensive collections of Chinese art.
The Palace Museum is a large national museum complex housed in the Forbidden City at the core of Beijing, China. With 720,000 square metres, the museum inherited the imperial royal palaces from the Ming and Qing dynasties of China and opened to the public in 1925 after the last Emperor of China was evicted.
Shaanxi History Museum, which is located to the northwest of the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda in the ancient city Xi'an, in the Shaanxi province of China, is one of the first huge state museums with modern facilities in China and one of the largest. The museum houses over 370,000 items, including murals, paintings, pottery, coins, as well as bronze, gold, and silver objects. The modern museum was built between 1983 and 2001 and its appearance recalls the architectural style of the Tang dynasty.
The zun or yi, used until the Northern Song (960–1126) is a type of Chinese ritual bronze or ceramic wine vessel with a round or square vase-like form, sometimes in the shape of an animal, first appearing in the Shang dynasty. Used in religious ceremonies to hold wine, the zun has a wide lip to facilitate pouring. Vessels have been found in the shape of a dragon, an ox, a goose, and more. One notable zun is the He zun from the Western Zhou.
Ding (鼎) are prehistoric and ancient Chinese cauldrons, standing upon legs with a lid and two facing handles. They are one of the most important shapes used in Chinese ritual bronzes. They were made in two shapes: round vessels with three legs and rectangular ones with four, the latter often called fangding. They were used for cooking, storage, and ritual offerings to the gods or to ancestors. The earliest recovered examples are pre-Shang ceramic ding at the Erlitou site but they are better known from the Bronze Age, particularly after the Zhou deemphasized the ritual use of wine practiced by the Shang kings. Under the Zhou, the ding and the privilege to perform the associated rituals became symbols of authority. The number of permitted ding varied according to one's rank in the Chinese nobility: the Nine Ding of the Zhou kings were a symbol of their rule over all China but were lost by the first emperor, Shi Huangdi in the late 3rd century BCE. Subsequently, imperial authority was represented by the Heirloom Seal of the Realm, carved out of the sacred Heshibi; it was lost at some point during the Five Dynasties after the collapse of the Tang.
The National Museum of China (中国国家博物馆) is the national museum of China. It flanks the eastern side of Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China. The museum's mission is to educate about the arts and history of China. It is a level-1 public welfare institution funded by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of China.
The Suzhou Museum is a museum of ancient Chinese art, paintings, calligraphy and handmade crafts in Suzhou, Jiangsu, China. It is one of the most visited museums in the world, with more than 2 million visitors in 2018. The Folk Branch of the museum is at the Bei family ancestral temple near Lion Grove Garden. The Western New Pavilion was designed by renowned architect I.M. Pei and was completed and opened in 2006.
The Wanshou Temple is a temple located at No.121, Wanshousi Road, Zizhuyuan Subdistrict, Haidian District, Beijing. In addition to being a Buddhist temple, the Wanshou Temple also houses the Beijing Art Museum.
The Liaoning Provincial Museum is a prominent museum of history and fine arts located in Shenyang, the capital of China's Liaoning province.
Chen Mengjia was a Chinese scholar, poet, paleographer and archaeologist. He was considered the foremost authority on oracle bones and was Professor of Chinese at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
Luoyang Museum is a historical museum in Luoyang, Henan Province, China. Situated in the Yellow River valley. It offers exhibits of the rich cultural heritage of Luoyang, a major Chinese cultural centre, which was the capital of numerous Chinese dynasties including the Eastern Zhou and the Eastern Han.
Guanfu Museum is an art museum in Beijing, China. It was founded by Ma Weidu on 30 October 1996, and it was among the first private museums in the People's Republic of China. The Guanfu Museum is a non-profit organization and it has a qualification of Independent Legal Entity.
Yangzhou Museum is the biggest museum in Yangzhou, an ancient city in Jiangsu Province of China. It is located in front of the Mingyue Lake on Yangzhou' West Wenchang Road, about 4 km west of downtown Yangzhou and Slender West Lake.
Ma Chengyuan was a Chinese archaeologist, epigrapher, and president of the Shanghai Museum. He was credited with saving priceless artifacts from destruction during the Cultural Revolution, and was instrumental in raising funds and support for the rebuilding of the Shanghai Museum. He was a recipient of the John D. Rockefeller III Award, and was awarded the Legion of Honour by French President Jacques Chirac.
The Da Yu ding is an ancient Chinese bronze circular ding vessel from the Western Zhou dynasty. Excavated in Li Village, Jingdang Township, Qishan County, Shaanxi, it is on display in the National Museum of China.
The Zhaona Xinbao is a special type of Southern Song dynasty cash coin developed as a propaganda and psychological warfare tool for recruiting defectors from the army of the Jurchen Jin dynasty around the year Shaoxing 1 under the reign of Emperor Gaozong. These special coins superficially resemble traditional Chinese cash coins but contain an inscription alluding to their intent, generally these Zhaona Xinbao tokens were made from bronze but in very rare cases they were also made from silver or gold.
Bingqian, or Bingxingqian, is a term, which translates into English as "biscuit coins", "pie coins", or "cake coins", used by mainland Chinese and Taiwanese coin collectors to refer to cash coins with an extremely broad rim as, these cash coins can also be very thick. While the earliest versions of the Bingqian did not extraordinarily broad rims.
Chen Xiejan, Doo R, Wang Yue (2006) Shanghai Museum's Collection of Ancient Coins from the Silk Road