Gao'an City Museum

Gao'an City Museum

Gao'an City Museum is a national AAA-level tourist attraction, as well as a science education base and a patriotic education base.

Gao'an City Museum was originally located at the intersection of Yunquan Road in Gao'an City, covering an area of about 1,300 square meters. Its predecessor was the Gao'an County Revolutionary History Memorial Hall, established in 1974. It was officially named Gao'an County Museum in October 1980 and renamed Gao'an City Museum on December 8, 1993. The old building of Gao'an City Museum had a brick-concrete structure. For a long time, due to its rudimentary facilities (it was rated as a CU-level dangerous building by the construction quality supervision department in 2002), high-grade cultural relics could not be displayed. As a result, exquisite porcelain such as the underglaze red from the Yuan Dynasty hoard discovered on November 29, 1980, in Gao'an could not be shown to audiences both domestically and abroad. To ensure the safety of these "national treasure" relics, they were kept deep in the underground vault.

To meet the spiritual and cultural needs of domestic visitors and fulfill the wishes of foreign tourists eager to see the "national treasures," in 2010 the Gao'an Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government decided to build a museum that matched the city's collection—Gao'an City Museum’s new building. On December 27, 2012, the Jiangxi Provincial Department of Culture (Document No. Gan Wenbo [2012] 67) approved the establishment of the "Gao'an Yuan Blue-and-White Porcelain Museum" based on the original Gao'an City Museum, operating and exhibiting collections jointly with Gao'an City Museum. The new Gao'an City Museum officially opened on July 25, 2015.

Gao'an City Museum and Gao'an Yuan Blue-and-White Porcelain Museum are located at No. 674 Ruiyang Avenue, Gao'an City, and feature architectural elements symbolizing Yuan Dynasty history and culture. The museums house over 10,000 cultural relics, particularly notable for the sensational discovery of the Gao'an Yuan Dynasty hoard in 1980. A total of 239 pieces of porcelain were unearthed, including items from four famous kilns: Jingdezhen, Longquan, Jun, and Cizhou. Among them, the Yuan Dynasty underglaze red and blue-and-white porcelains are rare masterpieces of the period. These artifacts are intact, large in size, diverse in type, elegantly shaped, and exquisitely crafted. Gao'an Museum ranks third in the world and first in China in terms of the number of Yuan Dynasty blue-and-white porcelains in its collection; it also holds the world’s largest collection of Yuan Dynasty underglaze red porcelain. These fine relics have been exhibited in Japan, France, the United States, Beijing, Shanghai, Qingdao, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

Gao'an City Museum and Gao'an Yuan Blue-and-White Porcelain Museum operate and exhibit together. The exhibition space consists of the ground floor's lobby, Historical Civilization Hall, Historical Humanities Hall, temporary exhibition hall, and multimedia hall, as well as the second floor's Yuan Blue-and-White Hall 1 (National Treasures Hall) and Hall 2 (Yuan Blue-and-White Appreciation Hall). The exhibitions use top-tier domestic facilities and equipment, along with display methods such as illustrated panels, text, glass cases, and advanced 3D projection technologies to showcase the historical and cultural depth of the collections.

The exhibition space includes the ground floor's lobby, Historical Civilization Hall, Historical Humanities Hall, and the second floor's Yuan Blue-and-White Hall 1 (National Treasures Hall) and Hall 2 (Yuan Blue-and-White Appreciation Hall).

1. The lobby primarily uses relief art to highlight the characteristics of the museum’s Yuan Dynasty blue-and-white and underglaze red national treasures. The sides of the lobby feature reliefs of the ancient Gao'an city, along with tributes to Liu Shu, a historian and compiler of the Song Dynasty’s “Zizhi Tongjian”; Zhou Deqing, the author of the Yuan Dynasty’s “Zhongyuan Yinyun,” the originator of the traditional phonetic system; and Wu Youxun, a renowned modern physicist. These are enhanced with lighting and other effects to enrich the display content and experience. Visitors entering the lobby feel as though they’ve stepped into a hall of history.

2. The Historical Civilization Hall mainly showcases the historical civilizations and cultural heritage from the Paleolithic Age to the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties in Gao'an. The content is rich and presented in vivid forms, using methods such as illustrated panels, text, physical objects, glass cases, sculptures, and sound-light-electric displays.

3. The Historical Humanities Hall displays Gao'an’s traditional culture in history, humanities, opera, and folklore from ancient times to the present. The content is abundant and presented vividly through illustrated panels, text, physical objects, glass cases, sculptures, and sound-light-electric displays.

4. The Yuan Blue-and-White Hall 1 uses illustrated panels, text, glass cases, wall cabinets, scene reconstructions, and sound-light-electric displays to accurately recreate the entire process from the discovery to the research of the Gao'an Yuan Dynasty hoard. It deeply reveals the historical and cultural significance and, through recent research findings, reconstructs the identity of the hoard owner and the purpose of the items, unveiling their mystery. The elegance, graceful shapes, intact condition, large sizes, exquisite craftsmanship, and rich meanings of the Yuan Dynasty blue-and-white porcelains leave the world in awe.

5. The Yuan Blue-and-White Hall 2 displays one-to-one precise replicas of masterpieces and famous pieces of Yuan blue-and-white porcelain collected by major museums around the world, totaling more than 30 pieces. Using illustrated panels, text, glass cases, lighting, and 3D projection, the hall demonstrates the process of the creation, standardization, development, and export of Yuan blue-and-white porcelain. It unveils the historical, humanistic, and political culture behind it. Visitors can appreciate the finest Yuan blue-and-white porcelains from museums in the UK, Turkey, Iran, and across China without leaving the country or the museum. This allows the charm of China’s Yuan blue-and-white porcelain culture to be fully inherited and promoted at the Gao'an Yuan Blue-and-White Porcelain Museum. Meanwhile, Hall 2 also features a comparison display of real and fake Yuan blue-and-white porcelain shards. Its primary goals are: 1) to facilitate in-depth research among experts and scholars on the authenticity of Yuan blue-and-white porcelain; 2) to enhance the ability of collectors and visitors to distinguish genuine from fake pieces.

The museum was rated as a “National Key Museum” by the National Cultural Heritage Administration in 2006, a “National Third-Class Museum” in May 2009, a “Jiangxi Provincial Youth Patriotic Education Base” by the Jiangxi Provincial Party Committee and Government in 2010, a “Jiangxi Provincial Social Science Knowledge Popularization Base” by the Jiangxi Federation of Social Sciences in 2014, and a “National AAA-Level Tourist Attraction” by the National Tourism Development Commission in 2015.

Further Reading:

· China National Second-Class Museum