Guangzhou Art Museum

Located in the Yuexiu Park in Guangzhou City (Canton), the Museum is a comprehensive history museum with local characteristics. It is one of the earliest museums in China. Established in 1929, it is a place used for collection of historical artifacts related to Guangzhou, holding exhibitions and conducting scientific research specialized agencies. It has two major exhibition areas – the Sea Guard Tower housing the historical relics and the Art Gallery showing many exquisite local craftworks.

Sea Guard Tower

The historical exhibition is housed in a five-story building named Sea Guard Tower (Zhenhailou), which dates back to 1380. Sea Guard Tower is 28 meters (92 feet) high and 31 meters (102 feet) wide. It has been destroyed and rebuilt five times and was changed from a wooden structure to reinforced concrete in 1928. The reddish-brown bricks and grey tiles made the building primitively simple and unique. At the front of the building, there is a pair of two-meter-high stone lions in red sandstone made in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).

The tower houses nearly a thousand pictures, data and other exhibits on history of the city's history. Those collections display the changes of culture, custom and city developments. Walking into it, you can see a geographical model and a diagram of the ancient Guangzhou city at the first floor. On the second floor, there are historical relics (4000 BC - 589 AD) and unearthed remains of the Neolithic Age. To the west of Sea Tower there are gun holders and hall built in 1964. There are barbette to cast in Guangzhou city defense artillery in Qing Dynasty, as well as iron and steel was purchased from Germany's Krupp cannon cast during the Opium War. To the east side there are thematic showrooms built in 1986. It regularly organizes various temporary exhibitions or commemorative.

The Art Gallery

To the east of the Sea Guard Tower lies the Art Gallery. Zhongyuan Tower, the major building of the museum, was built in 1930 and imitated the architectural style of the Hall of Literary Glory in the Forbidden City in Beijing. There are two exhibition halls – one in front of the Zhongyuan Tower and the other to the east - housing steles representing masterpieces of Chinese calligraphy from the Jin Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty.

Since the end of the Ming Dynasty, Guangzhou acted as an important port for foreign trade on the marine Silk Road. Many delicate local craftworks with features of south China became more and more popular among western countries. The Art Gallery exhibits some culture relics and handicrafts showing the Chinese and Western culture exchange at that time. On the ground floor exhibits the silk, textile and embroidery artwork, which are for long the favorites of westerners. The second floor shows porcelain and a large number of Chinese paintings of various dynasties in ancient Chinese history. The painted porcelain, lacquer work and ivory carvings are on the third floor. Apart from these precious collections, there is a Paleontology Exhibition Hall to the east of the Zhongyuan Tower, displaying the Paleozoic and Mesozoic fossils and the models of the life scenes of the ancestors of human beings in the remote past.

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