Shanghai Museum

The museum was founded in 1952 and was first open to the public in the former Shanghai Racecourse club house, now at 325 West Nanjing Road. The founding collections came principally from three sources: a batch of artifacts gathered by the Communist 3rd Field Army during the civil war from accidental finds and confiscations of private property and brought to Shanghai upon the Communists' conquest of the city; artifacts confiscated by the customs service; items sold by private collectors due to political pressure during political purges and purchased by the government. The former Shanghai Municipal Museum was also merged into the new Shanghai Museum. In the next few years, the museum's collections were further enriched from other private and institutional collections in Shanghai, including the collection of the former Shanghai Museum of the Royal Asiatic Society, which were moved to the museum as "foreign" institutions gradually left the city in the 1950s. In 1959 the museum moved into the Zhonghui Building at 16 South Henan Road, which housed insurance companies and bank offices. Ma raised US$25 million by leasing the old building to a Hong Kong developer. He also made many trips abroad to solicit donations, mainly from the Shanghai diaspora who had fled to Hong Kong after the Communist revolution, raising another $10 million. The money still ran short, but he eventually won another 140 million yuan from the city government to complete the building.). ==Collections==

The museum has a collection of over 120,000 pieces, including bronze, ceramics, calligraphy, furniture, jades, ancient coins, paintings, seals, sculptures, minority art and foreign art. The Shanghai Museum houses several items of national importance, including one of three extant specimens of a "transparent" bronze mirror from the Han dynasty. Galleries It has eleven galleries and three special temporary exhibition halls. The permanent galleries are: • Gallery of Ancient Chinese Bronze • Gallery of Ancient Chinese Sculpture • Gallery of Ancient Chinese Ceramics • Gallery of Ancient Chinese Jades • Gallery of Ancient Chinese Paintings • Gallery of Ancient Chinese Calligraphy • Gallery of Ancient Chinese Seals • Gallery of Ancient Chinese Numismatics • Gallery of Chinese furniture in Ming and Qing dynasties • Gallery of Arts and Crafts by Chinese Minorities File:You with zigzag thunder pattern.jpg|You with zigzag thunder pattern, early Zhou dynasty File:上海博物馆藏汝窑青瓷.JPG|Ru ware porcelain wares from the Northern Song dynasty File:上海博物馆藏明式家具.JPG|Ming dynasty style furniture and room arrangement File:Tibetalian's mask.JPG|Colour lacquered Tiaoshen () Mask of Tibetan ethnicity File:Westerner on a camel.jpg|Sogdian on a camel, in Sancai style, Tang dynasty File:Da Ke ding.jpg|Da Ke ding, from late Western Zhou File:Hunyuan Xizun.jpg|Xi Zun (), from the late Spring and Autumn period File:Jinhousu Bianzhong.JPG|Bianzhong of Marquis Su of Jin, from Western Zhou File:Round fan with grass style writting by Zhao Ji.jpg|Calligraphy on a round fan by Emperor Huizong of Song Numismatic Collections The museum has an important collection of ancient coins from the Silk Road, donated since 1991 by Linda and Roger Doo. The collection contains 1783 pieces from the Greeks to the Mongol Empire. ==Selected publications==

• Ancient Chinese Ceramic Gallery The Shanghai Museum. Shanghai: Shanghai Classics Publishing House, 1996. (English & Mandarin Chinese edition.) ==See also==