Long Museum, Baoshan, Shanghai
Long Museum in Shanghai’s Baoshan District is a nonprofit private art museum funded and operated by a company under the Dongming Home Furnishings Group. It is set within a classical Jiangnan-style garden complex, a setting that already makes a visit worthwhile before one even steps inside. The main building encompasses 12,000 square meters over four floors: the first floor houses the exhibition galleries, while the second through fourth floors form the “Wenchang Pavilion.” Both the architecture itself and the landscaped surroundings invite a leisurely stroll.
The museum’s collection spans nine major categories of modern and contemporary art, including calligraphy, Chinese painting, oil painting, seal carving, sculpture, porcelain, Yixing zisha ware, and jade carving. Taken as a whole, the collection is polished and visually impressive, and well worth taking the time to appreciate closely.
The Chinese paintings on view are strikingly consistent in style. Most are monumental landscapes executed with bold, rugged, weighty brushwork. Even the calligraphy pieces are oversized, and the texts selected tend toward the grand and expansive—Su Shi’s Red Cliff and Prelude to Water Melody, for instance, or other classical prose and poetry in a similarly heroic vein. Many of the folding screens also favor traditional auspicious subjects such as Flowers in Bloom and Splendor. Together, these choices reveal the collector’s clear aesthetic preferences.
Among the more unexpected works are a small number of stone carvings. Their carved landscapes, pavilions, and architectural scenes are often exquisitely detailed and visually refined, but a subject like a Chanel handbag feels rather out of place in this context. By contrast, the ceramics galleries contain painted ceramic works and zisha teapots that convey a more delicate, rounded sensibility, one that I personally found especially appealing.
The jade galleries are another highlight. Many of the works are carved from Hetian jade from Xinjiang and are exceptionally accomplished. Alongside more traditional themes—Buddhist figures or the gods of fortune, prosperity, and longevity—one also finds scenes drawn from history and legend, such as The Oath of the Peach Garden and The Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea. These pieces are dazzling in their craftsmanship and often genuinely breathtaking. They also prompted a familiar thought: compared with the brilliance and showiness of jadeite, the warm, restrained elegance of white Hetian jade seems far better suited to the traditional Chinese ideal of subtlety, inwardness, and cultural depth.
Also worth noting is a small group of zitan hardwood furniture on display, including tables, chairs, and screens. These pieces combine simplicity with refinement, and grandeur with a quiet sense of luxury—well deserving of a closer look.
Admission is free, and the museum’s circulation is clear and easy to follow. Although many of the works are contemporary, they are largely by established professional artists or prize-winning makers. With the added pleasure of the surrounding garden architecture, this is, overall, a museum very much worth visiting.
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