Jan 02 2024

Liaoning Provincial Museum

By 郭浩

Liaoning Provincial Museum

Introduction:

Liaoning Provincial Museum is the first museum established in the People's Republic of China. It was founded on July 7, 1949, initially named Northeast Museum. In 1959, it was renamed Liaoning Provincial Museum. In 2008, it was designated as a National First-Class Museum, and in 2009, it was listed as a nationally co-built museum by the central and local governments. The new building of Liaoning Provincial Museum is located at No. 157 Zhihui Third Street, Hunnan District, Shenyang City, covering an area of 83,200 square meters with a construction area of over 100,000 square meters. It is divided into five functional areas: exhibition, visitor services, cultural relic storage, cultural relic preservation, and comprehensive services. The exhibition area has three floors, with 22 modern exhibition halls and a display area of 24,000 square meters, making it one of the largest provincial museums in terms of building area and exhibition space.

Liaoning Provincial Museum currently houses nearly 120,000 cultural relics, including tens of thousands of precious artifacts. The collection mainly consists of archaeological artifacts from the Liaoning region and historical art objects. It is divided into twenty categories, such as calligraphy, painting, silk embroidery, bronze, and ceramics. Notably, the museum has a significant collection of ancient Chinese calligraphy and painting, Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasty silk embroidery, Hongshan Culture jade artifacts, buried bronze vessels from the Shang and Zhou dynasties, Liao dynasty ceramics, stone steles from various periods, Ming and Qing dynasty woodblock prints, ancient maps, and various historical currencies. The museum's collection of calligraphy and painting is highly regarded both domestically and internationally for its completeness, high quality, and outstanding masterpieces. Some notable works include the earliest surviving Kai script calligraphy manuscript "Eulogy to Cao E" from the Eastern Jin Dynasty, "Wansui Tongtian Tie" copied in the Tang Dynasty, the "Four Treasures of Ancient Poetry" by Zhang Xu, the unique manuscript of the cursive script by Song Huizong, the masterpiece "Lady with a Flower Hairpin" by Tang Zhou Fang, the Song dynasty copy of Zhang Xuan's "Lady Guoguo Enjoying the Spring," the representative work "Waiting to Cross the Xiajing Mountain" by Dong Yuan, the "Ruihe Tu" by Song Huizong, and many more, all of which are rare treasures.

Official Website: Liaoning Provincial Museum