The Chongqing Art Museum is housed in the arts centre at Jiefangbei, in the middle of the city's main commercial district, and it shows the work of artists from Chongqing and Sichuan together with a programme of national and international exhibitions. Its identity is tied to its region: the Sichuan school of painting, with its ink landscape tradition, its woodblock prints and its later move into expressive figure painting, is the core of the collection, and the museum is the best place in the city to see what artists from this part of China have actually made.
What it shows
The permanent holdings cover twentieth-century ink painting, oil painting, printmaking and sculpture from the south-west, including work made during the war years when Chongqing was the capital and a great many artists and writers were living in the city. Temporary exhibitions bring in contemporary Chinese work of all kinds - painting, photography, installation, video - and the museum has become a venue for the city's growing contemporary scene. There are also studios, a lecture room and a shop, and the building itself, with its distinctive sloping facade, is one of the more recognisable pieces of recent architecture in the district.
The quarter
Jiefangbei itself is the commercial heart of Chongqing: a pedestrian district of malls, department stores, food streets and enormous crowds, arranged around the Liberation Monument. The area also holds the Luohan temple, several old lanes and the redeveloped riverside at Chaotianmen, all within walking distance, and it is the easiest part of the city to combine a museum visit with shopping and a meal. At night the district is lit and very busy, which is part of what makes Chongqing distinctive.
Practical notes
The museum is open daily except Mondays, admission is free with an identity document, and it keeps day-time hours. It is a short walk from subway stations serving several lines, and everything in the district is within fifteen minutes on foot. Allow about an hour for the permanent collection and more if there is a large temporary show. Weekday mornings are quiet; afternoons and weekends bring the shopping crowds into the streets around it. If you are interested in wartime Chinese art, the same area holds several smaller memorial museums that fill out the picture.
