Muxin Art Museum

Muxin Art Museum

On November 15, 2015, the Muxin Art Museum in Wuzhen held its opening ceremony. It officially opened to the public on November 16. The museum was designed and supervised by Hiroshi Okamoto and Lin Bing of New York-based OLI Architects, disciples of I.M. Pei. Funded by Wuzhen Tourism Co., Ltd. and constructed by Jujiang Construction Group Co., Ltd., the entire project took four years; the interior design was led by OLI designer Fabian, spanning a period of one and a half years. In the autumn of 2011, Mr. Muxin and Chen Xianghong, CEO of “Cultural Wuzhen,” finalized the museum’s location on West Scenic Zone of Wuzhen, jointly appointing Muxin’s student and painter Chen Danqing as the museum director.

The first and second floors of the museum house five specialized exhibition rooms that permanently display Muxin’s works: the introductory hall provides a comprehensive physical overview of Muxin’s life; Rooms 1, 2, 3, and 4 showcase Muxin’s paintings from different periods, including his “prison manuscripts.” The fifth room is a literature-dedicated gallery, displaying a large number of Muxin’s manuscripts from various periods and featuring a small screening room. At the north end of the museum is a stepped library facing the museum’s backyard. The underground space includes two special exhibition halls and a multipurpose hall. After opening, the multipurpose hall is dedicated to screening enlarged versions of Muxin’s paintings. The café and the atrium’s water curtain are also located in the underground section. After Muxin’s passing, over 600 of his paintings and thousands of literary manuscripts were left behind. After careful selection, about 100 paintings and around 50 manuscripts are on display, with occasional future rotations. To study individuals who significantly influenced Muxin, the museum director curated the following opening special exhibitions: “Lin Fengmian and Muxin,” jointly presented with ten works by Lin Fengmian and four by Muxin, provided by the Shanghai Chinese Painting Academy, retracing the friendship between teacher and student sixty years ago.

“Nietzsche and Muxin,” in collaboration with the “Goethe and Schiller Archives,” “Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek,” “Naumburg Nietzsche Documentation Center,” and the “Nietzsche Foundation” from Weimar, Germany, features four Nietzsche manuscripts, twenty-one original 19th-century publications, and nine portraits and death masks of Nietzsche, reflecting Nietzsche’s lifelong internal influence on Muxin. Nietzsche’s translations began in the late Qing Dynasty, and this is the first time in over a century that such Nietzsche materials have been exhibited in China. To show their importance, the German collaborators specially arranged for Rüdiger Schmidt-Greppe, Director of the Nietzsche Institute, and actor Matthias Busse to come to Wuzhen, where they recited excerpts of dialogues between Nietzsche and Lou Andreas-Salomé together with renowned Chinese voice actor Ding Jianhua. Traveling German pianist Xie Yashuang performed musical compositions by Nietzsche.

The Muxin Art Museum was planned before Mr. Muxin’s passing and construction began immediately after his death. The entire building faces south, with a tall, highly modern minimalist form that spans the waters of Wuzhen’s Yuanbao Lake, accompanied by reflections in the water, becoming a tranquil and elegant scenic highlight on West Scenic Zone of Wuzhen. As he looked at the museum’s design shortly before his passing, Muxin murmured, “Wind, water, a bridge.” This succinctly summarized and foresaw today’s completed museum harmonizing with the surrounding hometown scenery, and the metaphor of the “bridge” perfectly reflects Muxin’s lifelong artistic practice blending Eastern and Western culture and aesthetics. This phrase now hangs at the museum entrance, serving both as a tribute to the poet and Muxin’s most poetic description of his hometown’s museum.

The exterior of the Muxin Art Museum aligns with the minimalist aesthetic beloved by Muxin. The structure consists of three to five undulating modern geometric forms seamlessly connected, with high-difficulty cast fair-faced concrete exteriors—featuring irregular horizontal surfaces and uniform concrete tones—that create a contrasting harmony with the ancient architecture of the Jiangnan town. Inside, the exhibition rooms are based on five subtle and deep warm gray tones. Rather than using traditional hanging arrangements, about 70% of the artworks are displayed in exquisitely crafted metal or wooden display cases. All rooms employ dim overall lighting with localized illumination, reflecting Muxin’s solitary and transcendent spirit, perfectly presenting the sense of isolation, detachment, and penetration characteristic of Muxin’s style. With extremely restrained framing, the aesthetic scale of Muxin’s landscape paintings—balancing micro and macro perspectives—is subtly revealed.

Wuzhen Town: Wuzhen — a historic water town in the Jiangnan region, known for its cultural heritage and as a famous tourist destination.

For generations, the people of Wuzhen have lived quietly on this fertile land, crafting happy lives with their diligence and wisdom. Since opening as a tourist town in 2001, the once serene streets and alleys have welcomed batches of domestic and international visitors, propelling this Jiangnan town to sudden fame and renown across the world. The unprecedented development of the tourism industry has also driven the growth of Wuzhen’s primary and secondary sectors. In recent years, the Wuzhen Town Party Committee and government... Wuzhen Town detailed information++