Art, books, life converge at one museum
The Pearl Art Museum in Shanghai is a unique art and cultural site where an art museum and a bookstore coexist, maintaining a close connection with everyday life.
Co-founded by the Shanghai Xinhua Distribution Group and the Red Star Macalline Group, PAM was designed by world-renowned architect Tadao Ando.
The mission of PAM is “illuminating life through art.” Using interconnected working methods and bringing together top artists and creatives from all over the world, PAM has created “a museum without walls and a mobile art academy,” energizing the city with art, culture, creativity and an open collaborative approach.
Architecture style
Passers-by on Wuzhong Road can see a silver metallic “egg” embedded in a corner of the roof of the Aegean Place shopping center, which is the iconic exterior of the art museum and bookstore.
The art museum-cum-bookstore is one of Ando’s signature works in Shanghai.
The Heart Hall, which connects the Light Space Bookstore on the seventh floor and the art museum on the eighth floor, is a multifunctional space with a cluster of 10-meter-high log-made bookshelves. Connecting art and reading, the hall allows the art museum and the bookstore to interact in terms of form and content.
The hall also has a projected starry dome plus a reading coffee bar, becoming a must-visit for readers and fans of architecture because of its visual impact.
With a total floor area of about 5,000 square meters, the bookstore has nearly 150,000 books in fields varying from humanities, social sciences, literature, art, architecture and design to finance, economics, life and growth.
Different from other art museums in town, an art trip is not confined to the museum, but is a start for a new experience on entering the bookstore.
Café and restaurant
The cafeteria unveiled the first season of the “Writers’ Cocktail” last year, featuring seven cocktails with interesting names. For example, “Sunrise on the Sea” is inspired by Chinese writer Ba Jin’s essay “Sunrise,” with a color that mimics the sun’s gradual brightening as it emerges from the sea. “Whiskey” is named after what Mark Twain was so enamored with that he drank a glass of it before breakfast, dinner and bedtime. The “Gimlet” was mentioned 21 times by Raymond Chandler in his detective novel “The Long Goodbye.”
Their books are also displayed at the bar, synchronizing reading with cocktail tasting for an immersive experience.
Best-sellers at gift shop
During the first Mucha retrospective in China at PAM in 2019, the museum released a wide variety of art derivatives of his works such as apparel, stationery and household items.
One of the highlights was the co-branded Mucha apparel series — including clothing, silk scarves, fans and pillows — launched by PAM and designer Zhang Na, founder of the Recycled Clothes Bank. Using environment-friendly fabrics and combining the concepts of environmental protection, traditional elements and modern forms, Zhang reinterpreted the beauty of Mucha’s works.
“Victor Hugo: Inside the Mind of a Genius,” an exhibition held in 2019, launched a variety of derivatives, including canvas bags, folders, bookmarks and note bricks. The most impressive is a 3D-printed floral
Architecture is seen as frozen music, an epic of stone and a cultural monument. An art museum epitomizes this.
Aiming to level up with the world’s top museums such as the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Tate in London, museums in Shanghai have been “blossoming” in the past decade.
Visiting museums has become a lifestyle, a kind of social activity or recreation. As well as the exhibitions inside, what else can visitors enjoy on a cozy weekend afternoon at a museum?
In this series “Art Unfrozen: A Journey through Shanghai’s Cultural Landmarks,” we will guide you through an immersive experience, varying from each museum’s architectural style, gift shops to its cafeteria or coffee shops in its neighborhood.
Now get ready for a museum trip! vessel, shaped from the words Hugo wrote three days before he died: “To love is to act.”
The 2020 exhibition “In the Name of Flowers” developed silk scarves, tapes and prints.
Tuesdays to Thursdays: 10am-7pm Fridays to Sundays: 10am-10pm Closed on Mondays
8F, 1588 Wuzhong Road ѝ䐟1588ਧ8ቲ