Discover Beijing
Red Brick Art Museum
红砖美术馆
A privately founded contemporary art museum on the city's northeast edge whose building is the real attraction: grey and red brickwork, vaulted galleries and a large classical-Chinese-style garden of water courts and walled walks designed by the architect-owner. Beijing's most architecturally satisfying art space.
The story
What makes this place special
The Red Brick Art Museum was founded by the collectors Yan Shijie and Cao Mei and opened on 23 May 2014 at Hegezhuang village, Cuigezhuang, in Beijing's Chaoyang district - not in Shunyi, as is often stated. Both the building and its garden were designed by Dong Yugan, a professor at Peking University's architecture research centre, who used red brick as the single structural and decorative material throughout, with a separate grey-brick classical garden courtyard. It is a private museum of contemporary art with roughly 9,700 square metres of floor area across two above-ground levels and a partial basement, holding nine exhibition spaces, two public lounges and an art-product space.
What you’ll discover
The building is the main event: red brick used for walls, vaults, arches, screens and even window tracery, in a sequence of top-lit galleries that open onto a landscaped garden of brick walls, pools, bamboo and framed views - a deliberately Chinese-garden reading of a modern museum. The galleries hold changing contemporary exhibitions, usually international, of varying quality. The garden is where most visitors spend longest.
A little local insight
Good to know before you go
- Allow as much time for the garden as the galleries. The brick garden behind the building - with its framed openings, water and circular courts - is why architects come here, and it is easy to see the exhibitions and leave without ever going out the back.
- It is in Chaoyang, at Hegezhuang near the Cuigezhuang crossroads, well out towards the airport and not reachable on foot from anything. Take a taxi or ride-hail both ways and allow 45 minutes to an hour from central Beijing.
- Check the current exhibition before committing to the trip. The building is always worth it; the shows are not always.
- Combine with the galleries and studios in the surrounding art villages - Caochangdi and the 798 area are on the same side of the city - rather than making a single return trip.
- Weekdays are near-empty. On weekends it is a photography destination and the garden's best framed views have queues of people posing in them.
- Late afternoon light on red brick is the reason to go then rather than at midday.
When to come
Late afternoon on a weekday, when the brick warms up and the crowds have gone. Spring and autumn for the garden; the garden is the point and it is bleak in winter.
Getting around
A purpose-built modern museum: galleries are reached by lift, floors are level and thresholds are flush, so a wheelchair can see the exhibitions. The garden is more mixed - its paths use steps, raised brick thresholds and narrow slots deliberately as part of the design, and parts of it are not passable in a chair. For a bad knee the galleries are easy and the garden needs care on the step changes.
Worth knowing before you go
Price is the one thing Chinese listings disagree on here, so check the museum's WeChat account the day before rather than assuming. It is 30-40 minutes out of the centre - pair it with 798 or Caochangdi to make the trip worthwhile, and leave time for the garden, not just the galleries.
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