南京博物院 | |
The Nanjing Museum exterior
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Established | 1933 |
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Location | Nanjing, China |
Type | History museum, art museum |
Website | www |
The Nanjing Museum (Chinese: 南京博物院; pinyin: Nánjīng Bówùyuàn) is located in Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu Province in East China. With an area of 70,000 square metres (17 acres), it is one of the largest museums in China. The museum has over 400,000 items in its permanent collection, making it one of the largest in China. Especially notable is the museum's enormous collections of Ming and Qing imperial porcelain, which is among the largest in the world. It was established by the Republic of China as the National Central Museum (Chinese: 國立中央博物院) in 1933. During the Japanese invasion, many collections were transferred to Southwest China, and in the end moved to the National Palace Museum in Taipei when the Kuomintang lost the Chinese Civil War.
The Nanjing Museum was one of the first museums established in China. The predecessor of the Nanjing Museum was the preparatory department of the National Central Museum, which established in 1933. The museum took over 12.9 hectares (32 acres) in the Half Hill Garden of Zhongshan Gate. Cai Yuanpei, the first preparatory president of the council of the museum, proposed building three major halls, named "Humanity," "Craft" and "Nature". Because of China's political instability in the 1930s, only the Humanity Hall was built. Part of the museum's collection was relocated to Taiwan by the Kuomintang in 1949 and is now part of the National Palace Museum in Taipei. The historian Fu Sinian and anthropologist and archaeologist Li Ji were once preparatory presidents, and the archaeologist and museologist Zeng Zhaoyu (曾昭燏) was the first female president and also a founder of Nanijng Museum. In 1999 and 2009, extensions were built to the museum.