Set to be the largest and most important arts facility in Northwest China Plans for The Yellow River Arts Centre, a 1.76billion RMB (US$279million), 80 hectare new arts centre being developed in Northwest China.
Situated along the banks of the Yellow River, within Yinchuan, the capital of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and along the northern route of the historic Silk Road, the arts facility will open in 2014. The Yellow River Arts Centre will provide a meeting place for local and international audiences and arts communities to participate in the production, exhibition, discussion and research of contemporary culture in all its forms, and to reignite the rich cultural heritage of the region.
Yinchuan Art Museum, the first project to be built within the new arts centre, opening Spring 2014, will display historic art alongside contemporary art, encouraging dialogue between the two. Central to the museum will be the collection of late-Qing oil paintings from the 18th to early 20th centuries, including work by Giuseppe Castiglione, George Chinnery and, Shi Beilin (Spoilum), the first Chinese painter known to have painted in oil on canvas.
The collection is of international significance for the study of trans-national art and illustrates cultural exchange between east and west and the development of Chinese oil painting. Curated by renowned Chinese art critic Professor Lv Peng, the inaugural exhibition will showcase 200 paintings alongside commissioned work by international contemporary artists to stimulate discursive engagement and international cultural exchange.
The museum building has been designed by WAA to rise out of the riverbank, its massing and textured façade inspired by the undulations and distortions of sedimentary layers of the eroded river bank. These effects have been realised through the use of glass reinforced concrete technologies on a scale never seen in China before.
The layout will include 3 floors of exhibition space and education spaces including classrooms, a library-café and a lecture theatre. The Yellow River Arts Centre is a core component for “River Origins”, a 30 billion RMB (US$4.76billion) major infrastructure project with culture, tourism, ecology and sustainability at its centre. “River Origins” is a flagship project for “Golden Bank of the Yellow River”, an economic integration of 10 cities along 403 km of the Yellow River.
