History
The building was constructed in 1933, as the clubhouse for the Shanghai Race Club race course. The horse race course was reputed to be the third most profitable industry during the 1930s (during the Republic of China era).
In March 1934 the new Shanghai Race Club building opened. The grandstand was thought at the time to be the largest in the world, and probably was, while the Race Club, with its marble staircases, teak-panelled rooms, oak parquet floors, and its coffee room which was 100ft by 47ft with a huge fireplace, must certainly ranked as the sumptuous club of its kind yet built in any country. China Races, Coates
In 1955, the building was renovated and a terrace was constructed on the roof. The goal was mainly to enable the architects to build wider stairs leading to the clock tower, so that youth can easily visit the tower.
The building has one of the most prominent clock towers in the city after the Customs House clock tower on the Bund. The clock tower at the Art Museum has historically been associated with decay and corruption in the city, as it was often inaccurate. However, it was renovated in 2006 and has been accurate since then.
Shanghai Art Museum is located on Nanjing Road. It occupies an area of 2200 sq m. It is open from 9.00 AM to 16.00 PM.
Since the early 1940s, the communists have built an extensive network of underground tunnels in the area. The tunnels under the art museum building still exist today. It connects to the Marriott hotel across the street, West Nanjing Road. On the top of the Art Museum is the Kathleen's 5 restaurant, a well-known restaurant in the city. Furthermore, the back road had to be refortified in 2005 since the food delivery trucks for Kathleen's 5 were heavy enough to crush the concrete pavement into the tunnels.
Read more about this topic: Shanghai Art Museum
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“Only the history of free peoples is worth our attention; the history of men under a despotism is merely a collection of anecdotes.”
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“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
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“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)