Shanghai has opened a 166,000m2 gallery on its 2010 Expo site.
The re-worked China Pavilion as art museum Image: Suzuki/SFGate |
As China develops into an economic powerhouse, it is also hoping to expand its cultural influence via its power staions, in the latest of a number of high-profile art galleries being constructed around the country.
The enormous 166,000 square-metre China Art Museum, now Asia’s largest museum, has been built on site of the 2010 World Expo China Pavilion, with the Power Station of Art - the first state-run museum of contemporary art - opening next door on the site of the old Expo power plant as part of the 2012 Shanghai Biennale.
The epic-scale Museum will require approximately two hours for patrons to cover the exhibition area without stopping and will be Shanghai’s answer to New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) or Paris’ Musee d’Orsay. More than 1,400 artworks from home and abroad will be on display in the 64,000 square metres of exhibition space, including an Andy Warhol retrospective and a Van Gogh exhibition.
Down the road from the China Art Museum is yet another new gallery, the Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art, which has opened on the site of the Urban Future Pavilion. Shanghai officials predict that the new constructions will draw in three million people annually.