DK Travel : Beijing : Museums & Galleries

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798 Space

For contemporary art the place to go is the 798 Art District, and this is the gallery that started it all (see 798 Space).
Ancient Architecture Museum

Close to the Temple of Heaven, south of Tian’an Men Square, this place is worth visiting for the museum building alone, which is the pavilion of a former grand temple complex (see Ancient Architecture Museum).
Arthur Sackler Museum

Part of the Beijing University archeology department, the museum’s collection spans 280,000 years, from the Paleolithic era to the Qing dynasty. As well as fossils and bones, it includes beautiful bronzes and fine ceramics.
Beijing Art Now

Exciting art space in the grounds of the Workers’ Stadium. www.artnow.cn
Beijing Arts & Crafts Central Store

Possibly the best souvenir store in town, filled with silks ceramics, jade, calligraphy, and paintings (see Beijing Arts & Crafts Central Store).
Beijing Police Museum

Housed in the 19th-century former City Bank of New York in the old Legation Quarter, this surprisingly fun museum boasts displays on themes such as the suppression of counter- revolutionaries and drug dealers. Famed police dog Feisheng is here – stuffed and mounted – and there are live transmissions from a roadside traffic camera. An interactive screen poses legal questions and correct answers win prizes: it doesn’t say what the punishment is for those who answer wrongly.
China Art Seasons

A high-ceilinged space well suited to large-scale sculpture (see China Art Seasons).www.artseasons.com.sg
China National Museum

What the Met is to New York and the British Museum to London, the China National is to Beijing. Unlike the two foreign museums, which are filled with an international haul of spoils, this place contains only national treasures – and impressive they are too. However, only Communist Party groupies are likely to appreciate the propa-gandist Museum of the Revolution, which takes up the north wing of the building (see China National Museum).
China Railway Museum

The recently opened Railway Ministry Science and Tech-nology Center has a vast hall displaying 53 old locomotives, including some of the enormous black engines imported by the Japanese when they controlled Manchuria. The museum is some distance from the center of town, but for steam buffs the 30-minute taxi ride is possibly a small price to pay (see China Railway Museum).
Chinese Military History Museum

Visitors to the museum are greeted by paintings of Mao, Marx, Lenin, and Stalin, at least two of whom were fully conversant with the various methods of bringing death and destruction celebrated inside. The ground floor is filled with fighter planes, tanks, and missiles, while displays upstairs chronicle China’s military campaigns (see Chinese Military History Museum).