Discover Shanghai
Shanghai Museum East
上海博物馆东馆
The museum's enormous Pudong branch, opened in stages from 2024, where the permanent collection finally has room to breathe across some 20 galleries plus an open 'visible' conservation studio. Chinese visitors now rate it above the original building.
The story
What makes this place special
The second site of the Shanghai Museum, in Pudong, built to hold the collection the People's Square building never had room for - construction began in September 2017, the bronze gallery opened on 2 February 2024 and the museum opened fully on 3 December 2024, with about 4,000m² of exhibition space reported for the galleries. It was conceived as a different kind of museum from the 1996 building: open storerooms and visible conservation work, much larger permanent galleries, and displays built for a public that now expects to see how a museum works rather than only what it owns.
What you’ll discover
A large, light modern building with galleries over several levels around a central circulation space, with the collections laid out on a far more generous scale than at People's Square - bronzes, ceramics, sculpture, painting and calligraphy, jade, coins, seals and furniture, plus large temporary exhibition halls and glazed areas where you can watch conservators and look into storerooms. The ancient Chinese bronze gallery is the headline display and the one the museum opened with.
A little local insight
Good to know before you go
- This is now the main event, not an annexe. Visitors who research 'the Shanghai Museum' find the 1996 building on People's Square and never learn that much of the display has moved to Pudong - decide which you are going to, and ideally do both on separate days.
- Book, and bring your passport. Entry is free, slots are released on a rolling window, and this is one of the most heavily booked museums in China since it opened.
- Go for the bronzes if you only have one gallery in you. It was the first to open, it is the collection on which the museum's reputation rests, and it is displayed far better here than it was at People's Square.
- The open conservation and storage areas are the genuinely new thing here and are easy to walk past looking for the next gallery.
- It is a long way from the Bund and the old city, out in eastern Pudong near the Expo and science museum area, so plan it as a half-day with its own transport rather than an add-on.
- Because it is new, large and air-conditioned, it is the best wet-day or heatwave option in Shanghai - and so is everyone else's, so weekday mornings matter.
When to come
Weekday morning, as early as your booking allows. Any season; it is the obvious bad-weather choice and correspondingly busy then.
Getting around
Excellent, as a museum opened in 2024 should be: lifts throughout, step-free entry, wide level galleries, accessible toilets, loan wheelchairs and plenty of seating. The one real caution is scale - the galleries are large and the walking distance across a full visit is substantial, so plan a route and use the seating rather than attempting all floors.
Worth knowing before you go
Note the inverted closing days: People's Square shuts Monday, East shuts Tuesday - so one of the two is always open. Arrive at opening; the Chinese painting gallery rotates and fills up first.
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