Tsinghua University Art Museum, University art museum in Beijing, China.
The Tsinghua University Art Museum is a university art museum in Beijing that displays around 13,000 works organized into six main categories: painting, calligraphy, embroidery, porcelain, furniture, and bronze objects. The exhibition spaces are spread across multiple floors and include both permanent collections of traditional Chinese artworks and areas dedicated to temporary shows.
In 1947 Liang Sicheng, Chen Mengjia and Feng Youlan, impressed by Princeton's collections, wrote to president Mei Yiqi proposing an art department and a museum; the education ministry rejected the department, but a Committee on Chinese Art History was founded that December and ran a relics display room, with Liang chairing the museum committee from 1950. After the 1952 departmental reorganization the museum was closed and much of its 14,000 objects went to the Central Nationalities Institute. The project revived after the 1999 merger with the Central Academy of Arts and Design, construction began in 2012 and the museum opened on 11 September 2016.
The museum's name honours donor Huang Rulun, chairman of Century Golden Resources Group, who gave 200 million yuan in 2013 for construction and received naming rights; the building is also called Huang Rulun Hall. Its opening exhibitions in September 2016 paired the permanent "Tsinghua Treasures" collection with a show of works inspired by Leonardo da Vinci, held as the fourth Art and Science International Exhibition.
The exhibition spaces span multiple floors, so it helps to take your time and move through the museum gradually to explore all areas. It is worth checking current exhibitions before your visit, as temporary shows and the permanent collection are displayed side by side.
About 8,000 pre-1949 artefacts owned by Tsinghua, including oracle bones, bronzes, bamboo slips and rare books, are not held in the museum but remain in the university library, with smaller groups in the archives, history museum and architecture school. The museum's own 13,000-plus pieces came largely from the former Central Academy of Arts and Design.
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