First Glance: Minsheng Art Museum, 798

This recent addition to 798 Art District made international architecture magazines because of its unqiue structure, and from the outside, the museum really does look incredible. Located inside what used to be an electronic factory in the 1980s, Minsheng Art Museum was l renovated and designed by Studio Pei Zhu, the people who brought you developments like Beijing's Guggenheim and Pace Museums.

The inside architecture of the museum is as impressive as the outside, but, unfortunately, it is mostly empty with huge staircases and random light structures filling up most of the space.

There are multiple floors and exhibits, some less worthy of your time than the others, with the best, Civil Power, located on the second floor. There are some particularly striking pieces here, like photos of demolition near historically important areas taken by Zhang Dali in the 1990s. 

This above image also stood out to us, having a slightly apocalyptic feel to it. Although maybe that was just the general vibe in this desolate museum. We didn't see another visitor the entire time we were here.

After this, we went up another floor to the third floor (don't worry if you don't know how to walk around a museum – there are some arrows like this one to help the indecisive and I, the inscrutible rebel, actually went against the flow to keep in theme with the exhibition. Take that, authority!).

Next up: tiny grains underneath telescopes carved with even smaller characters. Pretty cool and undoubtedly took huge amounts of time to complete, even if they did remind us of those necklaces you can get around the tourist-trodden areas, with your name on a rice grain.

After this, we realized that by purposely defying the arrows on the floors that were only trying to help us, we had missed an entire floor. Sorry, authority. Painfully, we trekked back up to the third and top floor, which you could probably skip, as the exhibit there feels unfinished and shoddily put together. Pan'r anyone?

These words may come across harsh, but from a huge investment like this we expected a little bit more on the inside. If you are around the area, the Civil Power exhibition definitely has some worthwhile pieces and you could probably kill about 30-45 minutes in here, but otherwise, there's a lot more interesting stuff to be seen around 798.

Minsheng Art Museum
Tue-Sun, 10am-5pm. Universal Creative Park (directly opposite the North Gate to 798), 798 Art District, Chaoyang District
朝阳区798艺术区（北门对面）创新园

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Email: margauxschreurs@truerun.com
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Photos: Margaux Schreurs, Studio Pei Zhu