1. Tree Art Museum, Beijing. As a landmark structure in renowned art village Songzhuang (a small town on the outskirts of Beijing), Tree Art Museum attracts visitors with a courtyard pool. Looking out of the French windows of the two-story structure, the reflections of the blue sky on the pool help people enjoy a moment of peace and tranquility.
2. M Woods Museum, Beijing. The M Woods Museum, located in Beijing’s cultural hub 798 Art Zone, has gained popularity among young Chinese over the past year. The contemporary art museum attracted some 2,000 visitors at the opening party with a theme exhibition of US art icon Andy Warhol in 2016.
M Woods is an independent, non-profit art museum founded in 2014 by collectors Lin Han and Lei Wanying, and co-founded by Huang Xufu. Formerly a munitions factory, it was rebuilt with renovations using translucent materials.
3. Muxin Art Museum, Zhejiang. The Muxin Art Museum, located in East China’s ancient water town of Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, is built in memory of late Chinese artist, writer and poet Mu Xin, one of the most popular writers among modern young readers. The pond-side modern structure is designed by a group of artists led by Hiroshi Okamoto – a student of renowned Chinese-American architect I. M. (Ieoh Ming) Pei.
4. Han Meilin Art Museum, Yinchuan. Renowned Chinese artist Han Meilin first visited Helan Mountain in Northwest China’s Ningxia Hui autonomous region in the 1980s, and was struck by the rock paintings. After more visits, he began using many of the mysterious patterns from there in his artworks. In 2010, Han donated over 1,000 pieces of his works to the municipal government of Yinchuan, prompting the building of Han Meilin Art Museum in the Helan Mountain Rock Art Heritage Park.
5. Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing. The Sifang Art Museum has been hailed by many as one of the best private art museums in China. Nestled in mountains in suburban Nanjing, East China’s Jiangsu province, the museum also features a lake zone which is open for public visits.
6. Yu Qingcheng Gallery, Tianjin. Yu Qingcheng, a sculpture artist from North China’s Tianjin, is famous for his clay figures depicting the lives of people in rural China. The Yu Qingcheng Gallery stands in mountains of Jinxian county, spanning an area of 1,800 square meters. Designed by the Architectural Design and Research Institute of Tianjin University, the gallery features a distinguishing “manifold” structure. It features different shapes of the buildings, forming a continuous flowing and changing physical space.
7. Gongwang Art Museum, Hangzhou. The Gongwang Art Museum is one of the most recent designs of famed Chinese architect Wang Shu, the first Chinese to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2012. The museum is erected along rivers in the Fuchun Mountains in East China’s Fuyang, Hangzhou city, where Yuan Dynasty’s legendary painter Huang Gongwang (1269-1354) lived and finished his masterpiece scroll painting “Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains.” Lines of the museum’s roofs echo the ridges of mountains in the back, forming a harmonious picture that seems to recreate the beauty of the ancient scroll painting.