Rembrandt in China

Although I have lived in Shanghai for many years, I had never been to the Shanghai Museum. It never really interested me, because the collection mainly consists mainly of Chinese calligraphy, coins, pottery, furniture and some classical paintings. I very much like art, but for some reason Chinese art never managed to attract me. Just like I don’t like European medieval or religious art. However, because of an exhibition of Dutch Golden Age paintings I decided to visit the museum.

The museum itself was indeed not that impressive, although some of the buddhist sculptures were quite interesting. But the Rembrandt exhibition made up for this. Spill Group Asia had been asked by sponsor ING to do the official exhibition website (and the game on it), so I knew quite a bit about it already.

Contrary to what most visitors expect, only 2 of the paintings were actually made by Rembrandt, all the others are from contempories such as Jan Steen and Frans Hals. They are all part of the Dutch Rijksmuseum collection, and this is the first time that any of them are on display in China. Next to paintings there are also quite some prints (all from Rembrandt I think), and there is some Delft Blue porcelain on display.

It was quite busy at the exhibition, mainly with local Chinese who came especially to see this collection (I assume this, because the rest of the museum was almost deserted). I suppose Saturday afternoon is not the best time to visit an exhibition, but if you do not mind waiting a bit sometimes to get a good view of all the art objects, it was still OK. The exhibition is open daily from 9 AM to 5 PM (ticket sales stop at 4 PM) until February 13, 2008. The entrance fee is a modest RMB 20, and for that price you can not only see the exhibition, but also the rest of the Shanghai Museum.