The Art Museum of China Academy of Art was set up in 2003, reconstructed from the Exhibition Hall, which dates back to the founding of CAA in 1928. The Museum is located in Nanshan Road, Hangzhou, with convenient transport facilities and next to West Lake, a World Cultural Heritage site. It uses the methods of visual presentation of art history and artistic expressions of core values. It not only explores the current mission of contemporary art and the creative representations of traditional art, but also serves for the construction of a public cultural service system. It is a comprehensive museum with multiple functions of exhibition, display, collection, research, academic exchange as well as public education, providing creative ideas and platforms for the omnidirectional development of CAA as an art academy. It has set up several administrative offices including the Executive Office, the Exhibition Department, the Archives Department, the Research Department and also the Public Education and Promotion Department. The museum covers an area of nearly 8,000 square metres, with exhibition lines in total of over 1,300 metres. It has six temporary exhibition halls and one permanent exhibition hall, with constant temperature and humidity control. Since its inauguration, it has curated and successfully held over 500 exhibitions of various kinds and scales over the last decade, many of which have been of great academic importance. The museum has already formed its own brand of exhibition series and free to the public all year round.
Wood, painted decoration, ceramics, weaving, printing, dyeing, shadow play as well as many other ethnic and folk handicraft skills—they all contain rich Chinese traditional wisdom, representing the Eastern civilization and a unique way of life. The Crafts Museum aims to collect Chinese traditional material culture and design philosophy, achieving the goal of inheritance, activation and regeneration of Chinese handicraft culture through exhibitions and research projects. Within the context of globalization, it takes the reconstruction of the Eastern design system and the cultural production system as its mission, so as to nourish people’s life in contemporary China and further spread the aesthetic values and cultural spirit of China. With the support of the Government of Zhejiang Province, the China Academy of Art began the construction of the Museum in the year 2011 with the goal of establishing a world-class museum for the study of folk art. It has multiple functions of collecting, displaying, researching, academic teaching as well as public education, and carrying out creative research projects both inside and outside of the school. In many ways, the museum shows the beauty of traditional life and provides a source of knowledge for the development of modern handicrafts and the expression of traditional culture. There are several administrative offices including the Executive Office, the Archives Department, the Research Department, the Curating Department and also the Public Education and Promotion Department. The museum is located on the Xiangshan Campus of CAA, designed by famous Japanese architect Mr. Kengo Kuma. The total land area is 12,204 square meters and the total construction area is 4,936 square meters, of which the exhibition area is 1,667 square meters. It also has a subsidiary collection area and an education center, with an area of 800 square meters and 180 square meters, respectively. Additionally, it is also equipped with an academic lecture hall and several conference rooms with the capacity of accommodating 200 people.
The China Design Museum (CDM) was founded by the China Academy of Art (CAA) with the support of the Government of Zhejiang Province in the year 2011, with an area of 16,800 square metres in the Xiangshan Campus of CAA. Mr. Alvaro Siza, the winner of the 1992 Pritzker Architecture Prize, was invited to design the new building of CDM, which will be open to the public in April 2018. After its completion, CDM will curate and hold exhibitions on design works of talenteddesigners from both China and other countries, aiming to become an Research&Development base and academicinstitution for Chinese contemporary design education. The museum will also act as a platform and ‘think tank’ for the creative industries in China. As the first official design museum in China, CDM has an important mission for design and development in contemporary China as well as the world.