New Museums in China

When I moved to China, I was struck by the quantity and quality of new museums being built there. Chinese cities—like American cities in the late nineteenth century—were claiming their places as cultural centers with aspirational architecture.

This book presents fifty-one of the most creative examples of China’s museum-building boom. It covers the geographical expanse of new museums, from megacities like Beijing and Shanghai, to manufacturing centers like Shenzhen, to once-remote outposts like Ordos in Inner Mongolia. It shows the diversity of museum types, from state-sponsored city museums, to private art collections, to buildings displaying cars, glass, comics, Buddhists sculptures, and artifacts from the Cultural Revolution. And it exposes a wide range of architectural ideas from both international “starchitects” and up-and-coming designers. 

“Timely and necessary, Clare Jacobson’s elegantly designed publication illuminates the unprecedented ambitions of the current museum-building boom occurring in China. What the author makes clear through her insightful selection of projects is that the aspiration to magnify museum production in China has provided a unique context for architects to reconsider the museum. This book records a critical moment in the history of museum architecture and will prove to be an essential book on the subject.” —Jeffrey Johnson, Director, China Megacities Lab, Columbia University 

“Jacobson surveys what’s nearly impossible to survey—China’s fast, furious, and frenzied museum boom. Situating each project in its economic, bureaucratic, and urban-architectural context, she reveals the varied agendas that drive these museums, prompting the fascinating question, as with all things in China: Where is all this going?” —Aric Chen, Curator of Design and Architecture, M+, museum for visual culture, Hong Kong 

Best Architecture and Design Books of 2013, Architect: The Magazine of the American Institute of Architects.

Best Architecture Books of 2013, World Architecture News.com.

Best Non-fiction Books of 2013, Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution.