Nanjing Museum
The Nanjing Museum is widely considered to be one of the finest and largest museums in China.
It has a truly superb collection of top quality cultural and artistic treasures They're well presented in a modern setting, with labels and explanations in English! When Nanjing was the capital of China before 1949, this was the National Museum, so many treasures from around the country were collected here. Although some works were taken to Taiwan during the Chinese civil war, the museum still boasts an array of treasures unmatched by few museums in the country.
The collection is so large than only a portion of its treasures can be displayed at any time. The museum is divided into several sections, one for each of the major areas of Chinese traditional art - paintings and calligraphy, porcelain, jade, ceramics, furniture and decorative arts, ancient bronzes, and finally a "treasures" section for the best items in the collection. The curators organize changing exhibits in each section, drawing on the rich permanent collection.
The museum has a first rate collection of traditional Chinese paintings and calligraphy. These two arts were traditionally paired together, since theorists thought both were a form of creation with brush and paper. The museum's collection stretches back to include some of the classic works from Chinese landscape painting's first golden age, in the Song Dynasty, over a thousand years ago, and includes works by many excellent masters in all the later dynasties as well. It also boasts an excellent collection of porcelains, with some especially beautiful masterpieces from the Ming dynasty. A life size reproduction kiln and pottery workshop shows how these ceramics were made. Another wing of the museum is dedicated to folk crafts, clothing, and popular traditions of Jiangsu.
Not just a dry collection in glass cases, bilingual explanations introduce many of the facets of traditional folkways of the region, and then illustrate and explain them using the historic objects. Displays on kites, toys, clothes, games, and folk religion bring old Jiangsu to life. (Source: jstour.com)
