Shanghai Surprise Day

Back in Shanghai!

With no tour group and no schedule, I was free to explore Shanghai the way I wanted to. And the first thing I always do when traveling to a new city is to check out their museums. Such a museum geek!

First up – the Shanghai Museum at the People’s Square. Housing over 120K cultural relics, spanning 5000 years, Shanghai Museum is regarded as the best-designed and the most modern museum in all of China. The museum’s permanent collection feature bronze and stone sculptures, ceramics, landscape paintings, jade, celadon ware, Chinese coins, seals and calligraphy.

My favourite gallery was the Chinese minority nationalities art gallery. With 600+ relics including costumes, embroideries, batiks, metal wares and wooden masks, the gallery showcased the artistic creativity of Mongols, Tibetans, Manchus and other ethnic groups.

I also enjoyed the special exhibition on Barbizon Through Impressionism: Great French Paintings from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, featuring works from Degas, Rousseau, Pissaro, Monet and Renoir.

One of the most eye-catching paintings was The Snake Charmer by Jean-Leon Gerome.

Other paintings that made me linger were the Seated Nude by William Adolphe Bouguereau, the Self-Portrait of Renoir (1875) and of course, Dancers in the Classroom (1880) by Degas.

After a couple of hours at Shanghai Museum, I cut through the People’s Park to get to the Museum of Contemporary Art or MoCA Shanghai. I normally prefer classic art over modern, but I read that they also feature cutting edge art and design, once exhibiting the 80th anniversary of Salvatore Ferragamo’s couture house.

And throughout the park were signs hung on lamp posts on a Christian Dior exhibition called Esprit Dior. I was beyond elated! In fact, I wish I knew about this sooner, then I would’ve devoted even more time to the MoCA.

The career retrospective was divided into separate galleries featuring different eras and aspects of Dior’s avant-garde style: The Dior Allure, From Pink to Red, Paris, The Dior Garden, Dior Ateliers, The Chinese Artists, Versailles, Stars in Dior and J’Adore. In fact, the entire museum was used to showcase his creations. I was in fashion heaven, gorging myself on all the exquisite eye-candy.

Amazing, n’est-ce pas?

I can only imagine how much fun and how much work it would take to put together this exhibit. One of the best exhibits I’ve ever seen. It’s Dior, of course.

View more photos of the Esprit Dior exhibit on my Flickr album.

Hours:
Sun-Thu: 10am-6pm | Fri-Sat: 9am-7pm

Address:
Gate 7, People’s Park
231 West Nanjing Road, Shanghai
GPS coordinates: 31.231365, 121.4705601