National Art Gallery of China

The National Art Gallery (Meishuguan) in Beijing is a very large building located in the middle of Dongcheng District, due East of Jingshan and its Park.

Constructed in the early 1950's during the modernization drive of the City after the establishment of the Peoples Republic. The monolithic structure is itself one of Beijing's finer surviving buildings in style of chinese communist architecture.

Other structures dating to the same era are TiananMen Square itself, and the Monumental Buildings of the Great Hall of the Peoples (Renmin Dahui Tang) and the former Museum of the Revolution and Chinese History, now the National Museum. Another one in the Line of Classic Chinese Communist Architecture is the Military Museum, located due West in XiCheng District.

As a showpiece of the newly installed totalitarian communist government, during its early history the China (National) Art Gallery functioned mainly as a Gallery of idealized Chinese Art and a mouthpiece of communist propaganda. In the 1950's and Sixties the museum was filled with idealized depictions of Mao, the Red Guards, Chinese Olympic Heroes or other noteworthy model-citizen examples for the Masses of Chinese Citizens.

These Times have meanwhile past.
The current day China Art Gallery hosts a multitude of magnificent exhibitions, from the truely old and rare, to new and totally modern art, the result of the rapid changes that have been sweeping China in the last 10 years. Among the subjects: painting, caligraphy, printing art and sculptures.

More recently foreign artists of exceptional skill or promising new directions have been invited to hold exhibitions at the Gallery annex Museum. The China Art Gallery of Beijing is the highest Institute, Museum and Gallery of Art in China.

The current day museum measures over 6000 square meters in exhibition space , divided up into 14 seperate sections or departments of the Museum. The collection of the Chinese National Museum of Art counts over 10.000 pieces of Art.