This page includes links to museums and galleries featuring permanent collections of Chinese painting and/or art, plus online collections.  Some temporary exhibitions are listed here.  (CBPS is not responsible for the content of any of these sites).

Museums and Galleries featuring Chinese Painting and Art

• UK
  • Bristol Art Gallery
  • Museum of Est Asian Art, Bath. MEAA has also very kindly put their collection online.  NOTE: will be closed for redevelopment from end 2024, reopen on 1 April 2025
  • Terracotta Warriors Museum, Dorchester
  • British Museum, London
    • Video tour of the China & South Asia Gallery
    • The Chinese Jade gallery has also been refurbished, with some exquisite new items
    • The Percival David collection of Chinese ceramics remains well worth a visit
    • Tour of the Hotung Gallery.  Hotung’s bequest to BM
    • Talk on the Stein Collection from the Library Cave, Dunhuang
  • V&A, Victoria and Albert Museum, London
  • Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and online collection
  • Pitt-Rivers Museum, Oxford, has oriental objects in the eccentric collection
  • Compton Verney, Warwickshire, has wonderful antique bronzes
  • Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
  • Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery has a large collection of Japanese prints.
  • Durham University Oriental Museum
  • The Burrell Collection, Glasgow
  • National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh
• Europe
  • Musee Guimet, Paris
  • Musee Cernusci, Paris
  • Asian Art Museum (Museum für Asiatische Kunst) is at Humboldt Forum, Berlin
  • Museum for East Asian Art, Koln (Cologne)
  • Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, has a small Asian Pavilion.
  • Ostasiatiska Museet, Oriental Art Museum, Stockholm
• USA
  • The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, & online collection & digitised journals to download.  A video touring the Chinese collections – a great overview of different media, periods, styles and imagery, and a glimpse of the richness of the Met’s collection.

• • Smithsonian – Freer & Sackler Galleries, Washington DC
  • Asian Art Museum, San Francisco
  • Asian Art collection at Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey
  • Harvard Art Museums, Boston, Massachusetts
  • Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts
  • Peabody-Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts – has a complete Chinese courtyard house, the Yin Yu Tang.  NOTE:  some areas closed for refurbishment/expansion, so check before visiting.
  • Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio
  • Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas city
  • Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis
  • Honolulu Museum of Art, Hawaii
• China.  Of course, there is plenty of Chinese Art in China!  Most Chinese cities have an art museum, so we can’t list them all here.
  • Palace Museum, Beijing
    • Famous scroll Along the River at the Qingming Festival and the River of Wisdom animated version.
  • National Art Museum of China, NAMOC, Beijing
  • Shanghai Museum
  • Nanjing Museum
  • Terracottta Army, Xi’an
  • Sanxingdui Museum, Guanghan, Sichuan: amazing bronze masks
  • Museum of the Mausoleum of the Nanyue King, Guangzhou, Guangdong
• Taiwan
  • National Palace Museum, Taipei, and Taibao City.  Online images can be searched by dynasty and category (painting, calligraphy etc).
• Japan
  • Tokyo National Museum, Ueno Park, Tokyo
    • Chinese Treasures in TNM, somewhat the pompous narration, but some lovely works including an album by Bada Shanren
  • Kyoto National Museum, Kyoto
  • Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts, Osaka

The University of Cambridge have digitised the famous Ten Bamboo Studio Manual of Painting and Calligraphy, an early printed manual of paintings.  More information in  a video about the Huntington’s copy of the Manual, with more information in their blog, and on the manual’s publisher Hu Zhengyan.

Find inspiration in these Japanese prints of snowy scenes in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.  (Click on the menu on the left and then scroll down to see them all).

There is also the Virtual collection of Asian Masterpieces (VCM): an innovative project of the Asia-Europe Museum Network (ASEMUS) that presents a vast collection of Asian masterpieces through the web.