Louvre on the West Lake

After five years of construction, Zhejiang Art Museum, which nestles against the Jade Emperor Hill and near the Long Bridge Park on the West Lake, was unveiled on December 25th, 2007.

Designed as the largest venue in the city to display artworks, the museum itself is a work of art. Although an ultra-modern building with a sloping glass roof and a fa?ade in various poetic tiers, the museum features an architectural style characteristic of the Yangtze River Delta: the color of silver gray suggests the typical folk residence in the area, and the museum merges well with the flanking verdant woods because of the use of some avant-garde building materials. Some comment that instead of looking like an artificial building, the museum looks as if growing out of the ground.

Zhejiang has long since yearned for a large museum to display the masterpieces by the large number of its outstanding artists. According to Wang Bomin, a contemporary art historian, Zhejiang claims 670 of the 2,100 master artists of national renown since the Wei State (220-265) and the Jin Dynasty (265-420). The artists in the province have dreamed of having a modern Louvre on the West Lake for the past 80 years. When the National Art Institute came into being in Hangzhou, President Lin Fengmian proposed to build an art museum on the lake. For lack of funds, all he managed to achieve was a small showroom on the campus. The limited space, however, introduced quite a few artists to the world.

In 1993, the museum project was approved by the provincial government. However, it was put on the back burner for want of capital. Kong Zhongqi, a master painter, still remembers how Xiao Feng, Xu Naijun and he hiked around the lake more than ten years ago in search of an ideal site for the dream museum. When they came to the road curving at the foot of the 10,000-Pine Hill and spotted a large desolate space of weeds and trees, they realized they were looking at an ideal site for their Louvre. The site is perfect not just for its adjacency to the hills and the lake but also for its vicinity to Nanshan Road, home to China Academy of Fine Arts as well as numerous art galleries, cafes, restaurants and lakeside parks.

The 300-million-yuan architecture occupies an area of 35,000 square meters and features a display space of 10,000 square meters divided into 14 exhibition halls of various sizes. The 2,900-square-meter storeroom is equipped with modern devices to maintain a constant temperature and constant humidity; the blast-proof wall can stand fire for five hours and the security door was manufactured by Seiko. The museum is also outfitted with a security system and a fire-control system. Inside the museum are a conference hall, a multiple-function hall and a multi-media hall, endowed with systems for simultaneous interpretation, video demonstration and film projection. The exhibition halls are fringed by classrooms, lounges, galleries, a bookstore, and a café. On the third floor is a sculpture gallery, with a commanding view of the neighboring Jade Emperor Hill. On the same floor is a viewing platform where visitors can view the breathtaking West Lake and the Thunder Peak Pagoda. With such a modern large space for the first time in history, Zhejiang will be able to host large-scale art exhibitions, which were embarrassingly off limits in the province for the lack of a proper venue in the past.

At present, the museum is busy building up its collection of masterpieces. In addition to accepting donations from artists or their descendents or other sources, the museum has an annual fund of 10 million yuan at its disposal to purchase finest artworks. At present, the museum has had a collection of 1,556 pieces including rare masterpieces by celebrities as Wu Changsuo, Ma Yifu, Zhou Changgu, and Li Shutong. China United Engineering Company has donated masterpieces by modern painters and calligraphers of Zhejiang origin.

Bao Xianlun, director of Zhejiang Administration of Cultural Relics, says that the second half of 2008 and first half of 2009 have been scheduled as the launching year for the museum. A series of exhibitions and symposiums will be held in the first 12 months. The preparations for a heavy-weight exhibition of Song-Dynasty paintings started in last December and are now in full swing. Hu Xiaohan, executive vice curator of the museum, notes that there are two reasons to assign the first public event of the museum to the masterpieces of the Song Dynasty. Firstly, the dynasty witnessed a pinnacle of the ancient Chinese painting, which was closely associated with the province and its capital city; secondly, artists of national renown gravitated to Hangzhou when it served as the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty; the gorgeous landscape around the present-day museum frequently appeared in their paintings.