dulemba: The Long Museum

MJ Begin, our Chair of Illustration, who has taught art lessons in China for years, suggested I go to the Long Museum. I went to the one in West Bund, and it's impressive.

The Long Museum is a private art museum founded by husband-and-wife art collectors, Mr. Liu Yiqian and Ms. Wang Wei.

It was an old mill building of some sort that they turned into an amazing space for art. Heck, the building itself is a work of art!

The main exhibit was a retrospective of the life work of Zhang Enli, but there was also work by Huang Yuxing and others.

There were several artists being featured and I found so much to inspire! It was a little hard to figure out who did what, so apologies for the lack of attributions.

This one was called "Childlike Quantum Mechanics"

Some of the exhibits were all more more stunning because of how the rooms they were in were designed. I loved these green walls. They looked like a corrugated plastic, but were actually glass. (I saw white versions of this glass later at Storyland - loved it!)

It was such a soothing space to move through.

The museum is made up of several buildings, another building held the portrait collection.

I was especially moved by these portraits of victims of gun violence made up of "AK47" painted again and again—by Zhang Dali. They reminded me of a Chuck Close self portrait, but with so much more significance.