Palace Museum to build new offshoot to display more exhibits

The Palace Museum [Photo provided to China Daily]

The Palace Museum will build a new museum in North Beijing to showcase more items, as currently the exhibits displayed each year account for less than one percent of its collections, Shan Jixiang, curator of the museum said.

According to Chinanews.com, Shan made the remark during the International Smart Tourism Conference 2016 in Hangzhou. He said that as the Palace Museum has a special identity as a tourist destination, museum, and a cultural education institution, it cannot fully display its abundant collection. In major museums around the world, generally, 10% or even 20% of their collections are on show, while the Palace Museum can only display 0.5% of its entire collection through around 80 exhibitions each year. Therefore, the building of a new museum is quite necessary. The plan has been approved by the authorities and it is already in process.

Shan revealed that the new museum, 25 kilometers away from the current site, is in a picturesque area neighboring tourist attractions, to the north of the Old Summer Palace, to the south of Badaling Great Wall and the Ming Tombs. The new museum will be a museum in a park, surrounded by a lake in the south and a river in the north.

The first stage of the project will cover an area of 12,500 square meters, which can be used to showcase a large number of exhibits with different themes. Meanwhile, the public will be able to view the process of cultural relic restoration at the new site.

"The new museum will surely be a green, low-carbon, zero emission and responsible example of modern architecture, which is also a harmonious museum which is best for the display of museum collections and for tourist visits," Shan said.

The Palace Museum is one of the top five museums in the world, along with the Louvre Museum in France, Metropolitan Museum of Art in US, the British Museum in the UK and the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg of Russia. It is the largest wooden architectural complex, the most complete palace building complex, and the museum that receives the most visitors in the world.