Shangrao Museum

Shangrao Museum

Shangrao Museum is a comprehensive municipal museum located at No. 17 Xiangfu Road, Shangrao City, Jiangxi Province. It was established on December 15, 1984, under the Shangrao Municipal Bureau of Culture, and was designated as a municipal-level cultural relics protection unit by the Shangrao Municipal People's Government in 1983.

In the early 1950s, cultural relics work in Shangrao City was managed by the city’s cultural center. In 1975, the cultural center established a cultural relics section responsible for the protection, management, and collection of cultural relics across the city. In November 1982, the Shangrao Cultural Relics Management Office was established, sharing office space with the cultural center, and began comprehensive cultural relics surveys. In June 1983, the office submitted a report to the municipal government, which then announced the first batch of 11 municipal-level cultural relics protection units. In December 1984, in accordance with the decision of the municipal government, the Shangrao Museum was officially established.

The museum is housed in a residence built between 1932 and 1933 by Shangrao paper merchant Yang Yitai, covering an area of 2,232 square meters. The main halls feature a traditional three-courtyard, two-sky-well layout with post-and-lintel wooden structures. The side rooms consist of front and rear attic sections with four sky wells and a mortise-and-tenon wooden structure. Both interior and exterior walls are adorned with five-peaked fireproof walls. The halls are decorated with carved beams and painted rafters, featuring openwork carvings of figures and animals. The courtyards are surrounded by corridors with floral-patterned window frames, and landscape paintings are inlaid between the walls. The beams and columns are gilded, and the side rooms embrace each other symmetrically.

Shangrao Museum officially opened to the public in October 1989. Its exhibitions introduce 13 municipal, provincial, and national-level cultural relics protection units across the city. The exhibits mainly include pottery, porcelain, metalware, jade artifacts, ancient coins, ancient calligraphy and paintings, stone carvings, totaling over 200 items.

The museum has conducted an inventory of its current collection, which includes more than 1,100 cultural relics.

Shangrao Museum is also responsible for the protection and management of the city’s 13 cultural relics protection units (one national-level, two provincial-level, and ten municipal-level).

The museum has published papers such as "Historical Witness to the Southern Anhui Incident – The Former Site of the Shangrao Internment Camp," "Strengthening the Protection and Management of Underground Cultural Relics," "The Current Situation and Development of County-Level Museums," and "The Path to Revitalizing County-Level Museums." These were featured in publications such as China Cultural Relics News and the 10th Anniversary Collection of Papers from the Chinese Museums Association.

In 2020, it was included in the “Fourth Batch of National First-Class Museums.”

Further reading:

· National Second-Class Museum in China