Suzhou Museum

The Suzhou Museum (Chinese: ; pinyin: Sūzhōu Bówùguǎn) is a museum of ancient Chinese art, ancient Chinese paintings, calligraphy, and handmade crafts, situated in Suzhou, Jiangsu, China. Admission is free. The Suzhou Folk Museum is located in the Bei family ancestral temple near Lion Grove Garden, the Folk Branch of Suzhou Museum is the first professional museum which specializes in displaying urban local traditions.

The current building of Suzhou Museum was designed by Pritzker Prize-winning Chinese-American architect I.M. Pei in association with Pei Partnership Architects. The structural engineer for this project was Leslie E. Robertson Associates. Construction of this building started in 2002. It was inaugurated on October 6, 2006.

The multi-year process of designing, building and inaugurating the new museum was chronicled in PBS's American Masters television documentary series in an 2010 episode entitled "I.M. Pei: Building China Modern".

The museum has a display area of 2,200 square meters. It has more than 15,000 pieces in its collections. Most are ancient paintings and calligraphy, ceramics, crafts, unearthed relics and revolution relics. It also possesses more than 70,000 books and documents, and over 20,000 rubbings of stone inscriptions. The collection of paintings and calligraphy includes works of masters from Song Dynasty to Ming and Qing dynasties.

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