Real Living Space

I like the fact that most of Shanghai’s major museums are located within or right next to the center of the city, Renmin (People’s) Park. There was, of course, the hulking Shanghai Museum. If you want to see a capsule of China’s traditional art and culture, head straight here. Aside from galleries devoted to painting, pottery, weaving, sculpture, and jade artifacts, their reproductions of traditional Chinese houses like this:

Next stop was the Shanghai Art Museum just off Nanjing West; we wanted to see that because they were just holding their Shanghai Biennale, and also because of the beautiful building—it used to be Shanghai’s horse racetrack back in its colonial days. The installation of giant ants outside really got our attention. But the snaking line of museum visitors outside was equally frightening!

What really impressed me, however, was the relatively small Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), discreetly hidden right within Renmin Park.

I hardly read anything about MOCA online, but it is a gem of a museum, and the perfect, modern building to exhibit China’s emerging and highly energetic contemporary art scene, and people should visit it. Here are some of the works:

And this is my favorite—an art installation showing all of the toys made in China—a telling social statement indeed!

Upstairs is Art Lab, a restaurant/bar that comes alive at night, where art exhibits take place, a DJ plays lounge music, and patrons can dine indoors and out (the terrace uses Kenneth Cobonpue chairs).

Visit MOCA for more information. Worth a look!

This entry was posted on Monday, October 27th, 2008 at 9:05 pm and is filed under Others, Arts And Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.