Shanghai Museum of Arts and Crafts
By Xiaoyi Cai (Mia) Date: 2/12/2022
Architecture
Shanghai Museum of Arts and Crafts is located at NO. 79 Fenyang Road, which is constructed in 1905. It is a model of the architectural style of the later period of the Renaissance of France.
(external) (interior)
The building was originally a residence of the director of the chamber of industry in French settlement. Following the victory of the anti-Japanese war, it became the office of the United Nations’ World Health Organization, and then the office of the Sino-USSR Friendship Organization in 1954 It has been the location of Shanghai Arts and Crafts Research Institute since 1960. The garden building is highly praised by both construction and cultural worlds as an excellent building of modern times. It is a landmark to be historically reserved by Shanghai Municipal Government.
This museum is surrounded by a normal living community that contains living areas, schools, hospitals, etc. All of those buildings were built at about a similar time, therefore, they have a similar style. In other words, the Shanghai Museum of Arts and Crafts is very integrated into its surroundings.
As the pictures above show, the overall style of this museum is quite old and sophisticated, which gives me a really positive impression at first glance. It creates an atmosphere that enables the visitors to immerse themselves in the whole exhibition.
Museum Experience
In order to visit this museum, I made an appointment one day before the visit, and they bought the tickets at the front desk on the visiting day.
Though I really enjoyed the fancy atmosphere created by the building itself, I felt not that welcome, which was outside of my mind. When we entered the exhibition hall, what made me feel uncomfortable was the behavior of the volunteer next to us who continued to look at her phone even though they saw us. Also, even though there is a guide tour map beside the door, it does not show the visitors their actual position, which made me confused the first time.
The Shanghai Arts and Crafts Museum exhibits more than 100 pieces from the collection and 200 pieces of other fine crafts, for a total of more than 300 exhibits. The museum has three basic displays: the folk arts and crafts pavilion, the carving pavilion, and the embroidery pavilion. The display format highlights the relationship between the authors’ inheritance, the production process, the introduction of materials and tools, and is accompanied by operational performances, with the leading idea of “people-oriented” running throughout.
First floor: Folk arts and crafts exhibition hall and workshop (He Keming lantern and Wang Zijin paper-cutting, which are listed in the national intangible cultural heritage protection list) and shopping mall.
Second floor: Carving exhibition hall and workshops (jade carving, tooth carving, lacquer carving, inkstone carving, porcelain carving, bamboo carving, ivory carving, small pieces of mahogany carving, gold and silver ornaments, and boxwood carving listed on the national intangible cultural heritage protection list, etc., as well as jade carving workshops).
Third floor: Weaving and embroidery exhibition hall and workshops (Gu embroidery, velvet embroidery, theatrical costumes, and “Zhao Kua Ming face sculpture”, which is on the national intangible cultural heritage protection list).
Therefore, we can see that most of the collection is displayed on the second floor, containing jade carving, tooth carving, etc. As for how the exhibits are presented, most of them are well displayed in the glass window.
For some artifacts that need to have a rather wet environment, there will be a bottle of water set in the glass window.
In every glass window, there will be captions set in front of the artifacts. Generally, the captions include information like name, author, medium, and date.
For some of the important collections, the QR codes for deeper interpretation will be attached, containing both the Chinese version and English version.
The interpretation given in both Chinese and English is very helpful, enabling me to get more understanding of the certain artifact in an easy way.
Besides the glass window, there are also some other special ways to display the artifacts. For Velvet embroidery works, they are just hung on the wall without any protection. However, I still appreciate this placement that makes the artifact part of this house.
There is another interesting way to display the collection in this museum. By using the technology of projection, this installation shows the audience various collections from multiple perspectives.
There was an artifact that impressed me greatly. It was called “Spider Threads and Ink Traces”. In Chinese is called 蛛丝墨迹, which is a very famous idiom. Its placement was very helpful for the audience to get a better understanding of this artifact. With help of the magnifying glass that enabled the audience to see better what is on the back of the spider, showing that each of the threads is carved the full text of the fifth chapter of “A Dream of Red Mansions”. In addition, on the back of the spider are carved “Twelve Beauties of Jinling”.
All in all, for the whole museum, I will describe it with two words: exquisite and various, because the collection of Shanghai Museum of Arts and Crafts has a great quality, and has great variety in crafting ways.
Audience
Most of the audience of the Shanghai Museum of Arts and Crafts are young adults, like college students, and parents with their kids. In my opinion, the reason why they wanted to go to this museum is to learn more about crafting artifacts and improve their aesthetics. For the precious collection, some audiences spent around five minutes for them. As for the overall collection, the audience did not spend much time on them, just giving them one glance. The placement of the collection is very welcome for the kids. Nearly all of the artifacts were displayed at around 0.9 meters high.
Facilities
The guide map is quite easy for the audience to find the bathrooms.
This museum provides a café on the first floor with the shop beside it. Instead of selling the merch, it tended to sell many artifacts. It arranged the artifacts that are going to be sold in a way like the exhibition.
The overall facilities are not quite kind with the disabled, because the only way to go ups and downs is climbing stairs.
Improvement
I greatly appreciated this museum for its building and collection, however, there still be something that could be improved, which may help the museum to better demonstrate the collection. First of all, there is no accurate catalog for each hall, which made me feel confused during the visit. For example, in one certain hall, there are jade carvings, tooth carvings, etc. that I could not directly find out the connection between them. Secondly, in my opinion. some interior style was not really matched with the collection to display. For instance, just like the picture (1) shown below, the interior decoration style really resembled the Western princess bedroom, creating a lovely atmosphere. However, the collection there is from the 20th century in China. Also, this style of this hall is different from other hall’s in the museum. Other hall’s furnishing styles are more stately (seeing picture 2).
(1) (2)
Thirdly, the placement of the paper-cutting collection is really not obvious for the audience, and I missed them several times because they were put in the middle of some other curving artifacts without any lighting.
Last but not least, in my opinion, there could be more interactive installments which may help the audience to get a better understanding of those collections.
Cultural Contribution
As far as I am concerned, the Shanghai Museum of Arts and Crafts makes a great contribution to much traditional Craftsmanship. Besides the related collection, there are many workshops for those traditional crafts, including Appreciative Woolen Embroidery, Gu Embroidery, Dough Figuring, Inkslab Carving, Paper Cutting, Colored Lantern, Boxwood Carving, Purple Sands, and Seal Cutting. With the help of those workshops, more and more people can visually understand how those artifacts are produced, and those crafts can be better preserved.