Museum of Art Pudong Opens on Shanghai’s Riverfront

The Museum of Art Pudong opened in July 2021 on the bank of the Huangpu River in Lujiazui, at the foot of the Oriental Pearl Tower and directly opposite the historic Bund. Designed by Ateliers Jean Nouvel and built by the state-owned Lujiazui Group, it gave the financial district of Shanghai its first major art museum.

Among the towers of Lujiazui, Nouvel chose to build low. The museum is a plain block of white granite, described by the architect as a sculpture calmly set on the land, with paving in the same stone running out to the river. Its event is on the side facing the water: two superimposed glass halls, each 53 metres long, lined with screens so that the wall becomes at once a window on the Bund and a surface for projected works. A bridge of the same length links the museum to the riverside promenade.

Inside there are 13 galleries on several levels and more than 10,000 square metres of exhibition space, within a total of about 54,000 square metres. The central hall rises 34 metres, from the basement to the top floor, and was designed for single, very large installations. Elsewhere, windows are placed to frame particular views of the city.

The museum opened with three exhibitions that announced its method. Light, drawn from the collection of Tate in London, brought more than a hundred works, from Turner and Constable to Olafur Eliasson and James Turrell, under a long-term agreement between the two institutions. A second exhibition was devoted to Joan Miró, with loans from the foundation in Barcelona, and the central hall was given to Cai Guo-Qiang, who made a kinetic light installation for it and showed his gunpowder paintings.

The museum is without a large collection of its own, and its programme depends on partnerships with museums abroad, an approach also taken across the river by the West Bund Museum and the Centre Pompidou. Together with the Power Station of Art, the Long Museum and the galleries of the West Bund, they have made Shanghai the city in mainland China with the most to offer a visitor interested in modern and contemporary art.

The museum is a short walk along the river from the ferry to the Bund and from the hotels of Lujiazui.