Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Best
Museums & Galleries
Shanghai devotes considerably more time and energy to fulfilling large infra-
structure projects than nurturing a vibrant creative scene, but give the city credit
for at least being halfway there: the number of new museums continues to grow
with each passing year. Even if you've been to Shanghai before, you'll always
have plenty of exhibits to choose from.
Museums
The landmark cultural institution is the Shanghai Museum (
Click here
), which contains
one of the best collections of traditional art in the country. But don't overlook some of the
smaller museums or the newer temples to modern art, where you'll get a feel for current so-
cial and artistic trends without having to sift through the sometimes mediocre work on dis-
play in the galleries.
Galleries
Like many things in Shanghai, Chinese art is a commodity being increasingly vacuumed up
by wealthy investors and foreign art hunters. Before you assume there's a genuine artistic
revolution out there, it's worth noting the tendency for gallery-hung Chinese art to absorb
Western needs and expectations like a multicoloured sponge. Originality is frequently
starved and there's still too much pop and not enough hop: the constant ironic artistic refer-
ences to wealth, communism, propaganda and consumerism can get old fast. But it also
means that Shanghai is hardly short of galleries - head to M50 (
Click here
)
for the best.
Best Art Museums
Shanghai Museum
Simply put, Shanghai's best museum. (
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)
Rockbund Art Museum
Top-notch contemporary-art venue. (
Click here
)
