New Beijing Museum: No “Dead Corner” in Protection

 New Beijing Museum, New Experience 

 New Beijing Museum: Masterpiece of Classicality, Modernity, and Humanity

New Beijing Museum: Treasured Relics

For Beijing residents, the old Beijing Museum that has lodged in the Beijing Confucian Temple since 1981 is only an old piece of architecture neglected by the temple visitors.

Few people know how many artifacts that Beijing Museum really has. In fact, only about 500 pieces from the 250,000 cultural exhibits have been displayed throughout the years, and many more have to be kept in storage due to limited space and out-of-date equipment.

New Museum vs. Old Museum

Four years ago, Beijing municipal government started the construction of the new venue in order to put more of the museum’s relics on show. The old Beijing Museum finally accomplished her mission in October and was superseded by the new Beijing Museum, which started trial operation on December 16th of 2005.

The 1.23-billion-yuan (US$147 million) new venue, located on the West Chang’an Avenue, covers an area of 24,8000 squar meters. It is 40 meters high and has over 60,000 square meters of floor space.

With five stories above ground and two stories below, this seven-storied building will have 5,622 items on display, which are almost 10 times the number of exhibits displayed at the old venue. Lu Xiaofan, vice director of the museum said that the museum was expected to be opened officially in two or three months.

Armed with state-of-the-art technology and equipment, the museum has 13 initial theme exhibitions, presenting a complete picture of the city’s history, architecture and folk culture.

Highlights

The exhibitions can be classified into three parts-- three basic exhibitions, seven selected works exhibitions and two temporary exhibitions.

Three basic exhibitions are "Ancient Capital: Chapter on the History and Culture of Beijing", "Ancient Capital: Urban Consction", and "Stories of the Capital City--Old Beijing Folk Customs Exhibition."

The seven selected works exhibitions displaying porcelain, bronze, calligraphy, paintings, jade, Buddhist statues, and stationery are all on show for the first time.

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