Date：2021-09-28 - 2022-01-03
Location：No. 2 Exhibition Hall, 2F
The Shanghai Museum began to accept donations even prior to its own founding. On September 7th, 1949, a Management Commission of Ancient Cultural Relics was established in the city with the approval of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of Martial Law. On January 20th, 1950, the Shanghai Municipal Government gave its okay to the rechristening of the Commission into the Shanghai Cultural Heritage Management Committee and started to set up a "large museum to display the splendid cultural tradition of the Chinese nation" in Shanghai, the cosmopolis in China. People from all trades came to help. Connoisseur-collectors such as J. M. Hu (Hu Huichun), PanDayu, Tan Jing, Shen Tongyue, Gu Lijiang, Yue Duzhou, Sun Yufeng, Ding Xierou, Luo Bozhao, and Li Weixian showed their exemplary generosity in making gifts to the Shanghai Cultural Heritage Management Committee and the Shanghai Museum in the 1950s and 60s. These collectors worked energetically for the cultural construction of New China, forming the very first peak in the donation of cultural relics to national institutions in the history of the People's Republic of China.
What is worthy of note here is the fact that among the donors in this period were Xu Senyu, Wu Zhongchao, XieZhiliu, and Chen Zhi, who were organizers and leaders at the early phase of cultural heritage management and museology in modern China. They, while drawing a blueprint for their remarkable cause, encouraged and motivated by example the masses and the collectors to uphold the rules and regulations concerning the nationalizing and safeguarding of cultural heritage and to support the work of museums and cultural relics management.
From the late 1970s to the 80s, seeing to their delight that China was undergoing an all-round growth once again, many connoisseur-collectors gave to the Museum their cherished relics, including those returned to them from the state authorities. A further enriched and more comprehensive collection in the Museum led to the second peak in the donation, which involved many overseas Chinese who had lived in Shanghai.
By the close of the year 2020, the Museum's official Precious Cultural Relics (PCRs) included more than 140 thousand pieces. Of them, over 33 thousand are gifts, that is, about 23.6% of the PCRs in the entire collection. The donors include persons and institutions. They have helped substantially to promote the cause of museology and cultural heritage management, showing immense faith in and enthusiasm for it, and have contributed their individual efforts to the continuing prosperity of China's culture.
Today, by hosting this exhibition, "Harvest from Generosity: Gifts for the Shanghai Museum," we gather various genres of cultural relics from representatives of our early donors and from trailblazers of cultural heritage management and museology and express our profound respect for and gratitude to all those who have given unfailing support to the growth of the Shanghai Museum, who have worked hard for the protection, management, and promotion of China's museums and cultural heritage, and to all those who created, inherited, and safeguarded our glorious civilization, that is, those of our great nation who were so diligent, so benevolent, and so noble.
