I had a great time visiting two museums yesterday: The Shanghai Museum and the Shanghai Art Museum.
The Shanghai Museum
Unfortunately, a few of the permanent exhibits at the Shanghai Museum were closed, so I wasn’t able to see The Calligraphy, Sculpture, or Painting Galleries. I was able to see the Ceramics Gallery as well as the Seal Gallery. They also had a great special exhibit: "Master Drawings from The Museum of Modern Art: Cezanne to Pollock," an exhibition featuring 72 drawings on loan from New York's MoMA. There was also an interesting exhibit called "Light and Stone" which featured more than a hundred precious stones from the collection of Michael Scott - who just happened to be the first President of Apple Computer.
I left the Shanghai Museum around 3:00, and thought I’d better find some lunch. The Shanghai Art Museum is located across the street from the Shanghai Museum. I’ve figured out that it’s usually easiest to find underground or overground tunnels to get to the other sides rather than crossing the busy intersections. While I was underground, I managed to stumble on a mall (which there are plenty of here) and found the local food court. Dick had told me about the food court in the Mall by his office, so I thought I’d give it a go. After much smiling and pointing, I bought two orders of dim sum – one with pork and shrimp, the other with greens. It was 7 pieces total, and coast a whopping 12 RMB (that’s equivalent to about $1.10 USD). It was very yummy, and I was proud of myself for bypassing the McDonalds, Burger King and KFC that were also available in the food court.
Dim Sum lunch in the Mall!
While I was walking around Renmin Square on Monday, I discovered that the Shanghai Art Museum was having a Giorgio Armani Retrospective exhibit. I found out that it is an exhibition that was originally organized and previewed at the Guggenheim in New York. Even better, the Exhibition Design was by Robert Wilson – an amazing performance and installation artist also out of NYC. I know of him through my friend Sam, who is a huge fan of Wilson’s Einstein on the Beach. I have also found out that my friend Alice studied with Wilson when she was a teenager in the 1970s. (pretty cool!)
The Entrace to the Armani Exhibit
Anyhow, the Armani Exhibit designed by Robert Wilson was simply phenomenal. It blew my mind. There were over 500 articles of clothing spanning his 30+ year career. It was so much more than a fashion exhibit – it was an entire experience! Each room set the different styles of clothing in a new artistic way, and everything was strung together through music and multimedia. The way that the clothing was displayed was just incredible. They seemed to be worn by invisible bodies, and rather than being put behind glass or roped off area, then were displayed as if they were standing or walking, and the audience could walk amongst and in between them. One of my favorite exhibit rooms was the one with the clothing that had been worn by, or made for celebrities – whether it be for the Red Carpet, or made specifically for movies. Such amazing and beautiful pieces of art – and I’m not even into fashion as much as most of my friends! I feel so fortunate with my timing here –the exhibit was only here for one month, and closes on May 3rd.
Red Carpet Fashion
After finishing up at the Shanghai Museum, I thought I’d walk around the Square a bit more. I’m amazed at the number and enormity of the shopping malls throughout the entire city! They are an interesting blend of American and European fashion stores, mixed in with various Chinese stores. I walked through a very small part of The Shanghai No. 1 Department Store, which I think was about 10 stories of ONE department store! I seriously got overwhelmed, and had to leave!
Miles of escalators at the Department Store!
Last night, we had a Shanghainese Dinner with Dick’s whole team – about 30 people total. It was a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed meeting and hanging out with all of them. Dinner was really good.The most memorable part was the shrimp plate which consisted of a plate full of small shrimp, but also had a bowl with a lid in the center. That bowl held a different type of small fish – which were still alive and jumping!
Dick playing ping pong.
After dinner, we took a walk through the rain and found a local game hall where we could play ping pong. The game hall was really interesting. It had all kinds of games available – billiards, bowling, mah-jong, shuffle board and ping pong. It was really fun watching everyone play ping pong. These young men and women have been playing since grade school, and could play really well! We all took a turn, but I was just happy to get a nice, friendly rally in :)
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