Poly Art Museum 保利艺术博物馆
朝阳门南大街新保利大厦
Part of A Better Guide to Běijīng’s coverage of North and East of the Imperial City
This two-room museum high in the New Poly Plaza building is one of Běijīng’s finest, although it amounts only to a single room of bronzes and a much smaller room of Buddhist statuary. It’s a shame that your entrance fee is going to a subsidiary of one of the largest global arms dealers, known to have smuggled assault rifles into the United States, and reportedly active with various unsavoury governments around the world. The group is also now making money out of its arts subsidiaries, including the theatre in the original Poly Plaza building diagonally opposite, and art auctions previewed on the floor above the museum.
The tower is US-designed, and in the lobby you might pause to admire what is the largest flexible glass wall in the world, running up the side of a dizzyingly high atrium. Buy your ticket and take the lift in the corner to the ninth floor.
There are around 100 bronzes on display, all perfectly lit and presented, and nearly all re-imported after being sold or taken overseas. Among the most attractive are an enormous dǐng (鼎) tripod vessel covered in a complicated dragon motif; a gilded bronze decorative dragon from a canopy of some sort, its snakelike jaws intended to frighten people away; a charming little zūn (樽) wine vessel in the shape of a rabbit; and a guǐ (簋) grain vessel of the kind for which the nearby 24-hour food street Dōng Zhí Mén Nèi Dàjiē is nicknamed Guǐ Jiē.
Most of the bronzes are many centuries old, but the star attractions are four relatively modern animal heads, designated national treasures despite having been made by French and Italian Jesuits at the behest of a foreign overlord, the Qīng Qiánlóng emperor. These were ‘robbed out of China’ as the commentary puts it, ‘by Western powers from Yuánmíng Yuán park more than 100 years ago’ (actually more than 150 years ago, but never mind), and there’s much strutting and chest-beating on the subject of their re-acquisition.
The separate room of Buddha figures, mostly in stone, is a small but very fine collection from a large number of different dynasties, some very early, amounting to about 40 pieces altogether, and again beautifully lit and presented.
See:
▶ Bǎolì Yìshù Bówùguǎn, Xīn Bǎolì Dàshà, t 6500 8117, en.polyculture.com.cn, 9am–4.30pm; closed Sun and pub hols.
¥20. m Dōng Shí Sì Tiáo (Line 2) exit D. b to 东四十条桥南: 特2, 机场3线,
12内环, 12外环, 44外环, 44内环, 75.
The Imperial Granary is just behind the building to the west, and the Guǐ Jiē 24-hour food street (actually Dōng Zhí Mén Nèi Dàjiē, 东直门内大街) a block north.
Next in North and East of the Imperial City: Losing Their Heads (story)
Previously: Zhìhuà Sì
Main Index of A Better Guide to Beijing.
For discussion of China travel, see The Oriental-List.
