WORDS DAVID ELLIOTT PLAYING TO THE GALLERIES While it may have become best known for its explosion of skyscrapers, Shanghai has also been busy building an impressive collection of contemporary art museums. ike Sydney and Melbourne, NYC and LA, and Delhi and Mumbai, Beijing and Shanghai have always competed with each other. As the capital, Beijing has the political Lstatus, but Shanghai has long been the commercial hub of China. In 2008, Beijing proudly presented the Olympic Games, but Shanghai was just as honoured to host the 2010 World Expo. Last year saw the topping out of the Shanghai Tower, China’s tallest (and the second highest in the world), but there are rumours that a new skyscraper in Beijing’s CBD will be even higher. China’s museum and gallery sector is no different. Beijing has claimed superiority, but now Shanghai is a very serious challenger, especially in the new growth area of private museums. Shanghai is huge – by most counts the biggest city in the world – and its art museums are spread out. Luckily, the city’s metro is excellent, so you can get to most of them by under- ground, and short taxi hops will see to the remainder. ❯ The Long Museum, PHOTOGRAPHY: GETTY IMAGES West Bund, Shanghai 82 QANTAS SEPTEMBER 2014 ART SHANGHAI CENTRAL SHANGHAI THE LONG MUSEUM IS ONE A good place to start is Shanghai Museum on People’s Square (201 OF THE BEST TO GAIN AN Renmin Avenue; 9am-5pm daily, free; www.shanghaimuseum.net/ en). Ugly on the outside, fantastic within, it provides a crash course UNDERSTANDING OF 20TH in China’s long cultural history including ceramics, bronze work, CENTURY CHINESE ART sculpture, painting, calligraphy, jade, seals, even furniture. You could easily spend half a day here, but if time is precious head straight to the bronze gallery. Hidden among the trees in neighbouring People’s Park, you’ll find the modestly sized, glass-encased Shanghai Museum of Contem- porary Art (Gate 7, People’s Park, 231 Nanjing West Road; 10am-6pm Sun-Thu, 9am-7pm Fri-Sat, 50RMB ($8.50); www.mocashanghai.org). Founded by gem magnate Samuel Kung, MoCA was the first non- profit museum to open in Shanghai (in 2005) and presents a wide range of Chinese and international art and design exhibitions, impressive digital version of the Song examples of which include a Gao Xiaowu solo sculpture show and Dynasty scroll, Along The River During The a celebration of Dior couture. Qingming Festival, by Zhang Zeduan. Just south of People’s Square is the new K11 Art Mall (300 Huaihai Across the river can be seen what was once Road Central, Huangpu District; 10am-10pm daily, free; www. a power station, complete with sky-piercing shanghaik11.com). Museum or shopping mall? Actually, it’s both. In chimney, which has now been transformed the basement is a gallery with shows ranging from a recent Monet into the appropriately named Power Station exhibition to post-modern design, while on other floors art is Of Art (Huayuangang Road, Huangpu; scattered in between the shops and cafes, including Damien Hirst’s 11am-7pm Tue-Sun, free; powerstationofart. bronze sculpture, Wretched War. org/en). Comparisons with the Tate Modern A visit to Shanghai would not be complete without in London are obvious and it has a similarly a trip to the Bund, and two museums here are worth cavernous turbine hall. This year, the gallery checking out. Just off the northern end is Rockbund will host the 10th Shanghai Biennial (Novem- Art Museum (20 Huqiu Road; 10am-6pm Tue-Sun, ber 22 to March 31, 2015). 30RMB ($5); rockbundartmuseum.org). The art Out in Pudong on the east side of town, deco building used to be home to the Royal Asiatic seemingly in the middle of nowhere, are two Society and reopened as a contemporary art space excellent contemporary art institutes. The in 2010. The museum holds excellent cutting-edge Himalayas Art Museum (1188 Fangdian exhibitions and features exquisite period details Road, Pudong; 10am-6pm Tue-Sun, 50RMB ($8.50); www.himala- carefully restored by David Chipperfield Architects. yasart.cn) is part of a big new mixed-use development that includes This is one of the most beautiful galleries in China. a shopping centre, theatre and the upmarket Jumeirah Hotel. In At the southern end, in the almost as beautiful 2012, it hosted a Tony Cragg exhibition of sculptures and drawings, Three On The Bund building, is Shanghai Gallery of Art (3 The which has been followed mainly by Chinese shows. The design of Bund; 11am-7pm daily, free; shanghaigalleryofart.com), which the museum, by Arata Isozaki, is worth the trip alone. opened a decade ago and concentrates in the main on Chinese A couple of kilometres away, and really in the middle of nowhere, contemporary artists such as Hu Xiangcheng and Gu Dexin. There’s is another new private gallery, the Long Museum (210 Luoshan Road, a great fine-dining French restaurant, Jean-Georges, on the fourth Pudong; 10am-5.30pm daily, 50RMB ($8.50); thelongmuseum.org) floor, while the Long Bar at the nearby Waldorf Astoria is a suitably owned by mega-collector couple Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei. This has glamorous place to pause for a libation. an air of exclusivity about it, partly because of its detached location, but for those who make the effort, it’s one of the best galleries to visit SOUTH-EAST if you want to understand Chinese art, especially that of the 20th To the south of the city centre on either side of the Huangpu River century. The impressive collection of Mao-era propaganda paintings are two mega museums, both of which opened on the same day two is particularly worth seeking out. years ago. The old Shanghai Art Museum moved into what was the Clockwise from top left: Going back into town, buried among the gleaming towers of Shanghai Expo’s China Pavilion and was renamed China Art Rockbund Art Museum; Shanghai’s “Manhattan”, is the Aurora Museum (99 Fucheng Road, China Art Museum, Museum Shanghai, sometimes referred to as China Art Palace, Shanghai; Power Station Pudong; 10am-5pm Tue-Sun, Fri to 9pm, 60RMB ($10.30); (Bocheng Road, Pudong; 9am-5pm Tue-Sun, free; china. of Art; Long Museum; auroramuseum.cn/en), founded by the chairman of a Taiwanese artmuseumonline.org). The building is so vast that it’s a struggle to Shanghai Museum (inset) office supplies company. Its parent tower’s gaudy mixture of gold- LONG MUSEUM PHOTOGRAPHY: CORBIS; SHANGHAI MUSEUM & CHINA ART MUSEUM: GETTYPOWER STATION OF IMAGES; COURTESY ART: POWER OF STATION ROCKBUND ART; MUSEUM: COURTESY ROCKBUND fill all five floors with content, but a must-see is the enormous and tinted glass, neoclassical columns and a giant video screen belie ❯ 84 QANTAS SEPTEMBER 2014 SEPTEMBER 2014 QANTAS 85 ART SHANGHAI Yuz Museum (below); Yuan Dynasty jar, Aurora Museum (right) the fact that the adjoining museum was designed by Tadao Ando, and its galleries of minimally lit ancient pottery figures, bronzes and jade are exquisite. Look out for the gravity-defying steel sculpture by Tom Shannon at the riverside entrance. SOUTH-WEST In the south-west of the city, just off Hongqiao Road is Red Town, which hosts a few galleries, studios and the Minsheng Art Museum a state-run art museum and a performing arts theatre. And (570 West Huaihai Road; 10am-6pm Tue-Sun, 20RMB ($3.40); Hollywood is moving in, too. The first phase of the Oriental Dream- minshengart.com). The latter has presented consistently excellent Works joint venture is already under way, with US and Chinese exhibitions ranging from a 30-year retrospective of Liu Xiaodong’s animators working together on Kung Fu Panda 3, which is to be moving image work to a 50-year celebration of James Bond (curated followed by an entertainment and culture complex called Dream by London’s Barbican Centre). Center, complete with an IMAX theatre. Farther south, hugging the west bank of the Huangpu River, is a brand-new art zone, the West Bund Cultural Corridor. Hot on the NORTH heels of their museum in Pudong, Liu and Wang have opened Completing the art tour is Shanghai’s version of Beijing’s 798 Art another, even bigger, state-of-the-art gallery, Long Museum West Zone, known as 50 Monganshan Road and often abbreviated to M50 Bund (3398 Longteng Avenue, Xuhui; 10am-6pm, 50RMB ($8.50); – a very cool assortment of galleries, studios and cafes in a former thelongmuseum.org). According to Liu, it will be “more international industrial quarter on a bend in the Wusong River, north of the French and more focused on the future and possibilities”. This year’s open- Concession. Here you’ll find the influential ShanghART (Buildings ing exhibition, Review, brainchild of über-curator Wang Huangsheng 16 & 18, 50 Moganshan Road, Putuo; 10am-6pm daily, free; (who seems to be everywhere at once while also running CAFA shanghartgallery.com), one of the first contemporary art galleries in Museum in Beijing), featured more than 300 works by 200 artists. China (with two spaces in two separate buildings) and Vanguard Not to be outdone, Chinese-Indonesian agribusiness billionaire Gallery (building 4, 50 Moganshan Road, Putuo; 11am-6pm Tue-Sun, and collector, Budi Tek, has opened the Yuz Museum just 500m away free; vanguardgallery.com), which has a strong focus on young (35 Fenggu Road, Xuhui; 10.30am-5.30pm, 60RMB ($10.30); yuzm- Chinese artists. There are 20 or so others to choose from. M50 is a shanghai.org). Formerly an aircraft hangar, the museum has a huge downsized boho-urban place to hang out.