Beginning with an exhibition featuring snakes, the Chinese zodiac animal representing the upcoming year, Shanghai Museum announced a series of 20 special exhibitions to start the new year.

The snake is closely related to the dragon, one of China's most important totems. "A snake has no feet but moves smoothly in the water and on the ground. It sheds its skin after hibernating, as if reborn," says Chu Xiaobo, director of the Shanghai Museum.

Such capabilities inspired awe in ancient Chinese people, who deified the creature. From oracle bones to bronze objects and ancient drawings on rocks, snakes are found everywhere in China's early civilization.

The exhibition Spring: A Celebration of the Year of the Snake from Tuesday to March 2 will feature 13 objects selected from the Shanghai Museum collection, including borrowed pieces from the first museum in China dedicated to bronze art in Lijiashan site in Yunnan province, and Hubei Provincial Museum.

"We want visitors to learn about how the legends of the snake are passed down and have evolved over millennia in Chinese civilization, and to understand how the shared culture connects people of different ethnic groups across the country," Chu says.

One of the most anticipated exhibitions of the new year is the fifth installment of Shanghai Museum's series A Dialogue with the World, featuring Impressionist masterpieces from the Pola Museum in Japan, scheduled from Jan 22 to April 21.

The Pola Museum in Hakone, Kanagawa Prefecture of Japan, houses one of the most significant collections of Impressionist art in Asia. Shanghai Museum will work with Pola Museum and Nikkei Inc to present at its new venue on the eastern bank of the Huangpu River the largest international show organized by the Pola Museum.

Featuring a range of work from Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Yayoi Kusama, the exhibition is the first time Shanghai Museum presents a panoramic showcase of Impressionism — its beginning, development, expansion and continual impact on the later art scene, according to Chu.

"This visual feast will not only focus on the visual and aesthetic preferences of Impressionist art from an Asian perspective, but it also uses light, shadow and nature to connect the significance of Impressionism to post-Fauvism, Cubism and contemporary art, and to show the eternal creativity and innovative spirit of art," he says.

This year, Shanghai Museum will also work with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to present an exhibition of Chinese bronze art. Showcasing more than 200 objects from the collections of the Met, the British Museum in London, Musee Cernuschi in Paris, the Palace Museum in Beijing, the Shanghai Museum and the Liaoning Provincial Museum, the exhibition Recasting the Past: The Art of Chinese Bronze 1100-1900 will take place at the Met from Feb 28 to Sept 28.

Ancient Chinese Bronze art reached its climax in the late Shang (c.16 century-11th century BC) and early Zhou (c.11th century-256 BC) dynasties in China, when ritual vessels in a wide variety of forms and patterns were cast for the worship of ancestors and the commemoration of important events.

Apart from ceremonial significance, bronze items continued to be made and appreciated, developing distinctive styles and aesthetic criteria. Bronzes were long favored by the literati and continued to have an impact on Chinese decoration art, with traditional bronze patterns, shapes and designs used on other materials, Chu says.

The exhibition also marks the first collaboration between the Shanghai Museum and the Met as exhibition co-organizer. Previously, the Met has borrowed objects from museums in China. "It is completely different this time, as our staff has been involved in the preparation, transportation and planning of the exhibition," Chu says.

The exhibition will focus on bronze treasures of the period, study their interpretation, the passing on and development of the early bronze ritual tradition, and combine lacquerware, ceramics and jade of the same period to show the nostalgic fashion and cultural consciousness of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) literati furnishings, and present the unique artistic value of late bronze artifacts.

The exhibition will later be held at Shanghai Museum East from Nov 12 to March 16, 2026.

Other exhibitions scheduled at Shanghai Museum this year include arts made from rhinoceros horn, a treasured material banned in the modern age, the art of Chinese fans, paintings, calligraphy and ceramics donated to the Shanghai Museum, as well as Chinese lacquerware from the collection of the Tokyo National Museum and other institutions in Japan.

Shanghai Museum celebrated the opening of its east wing in 2024. The new Shanghai Museum East, together with its venue on People's Square, received a record-breaking 6.57 million visitors last year. This makes the institution one of the most popular museums in the world, according to Tang Shifen, the Party secretary of Shanghai Museum.

The ongoing exhibition On Top of the Pyramid: The Civilization of Ancient Egypt has been visited by 1.25 million people since its opening on July 19, more than any other touring exhibition of Egyptian art in the world. Shanghai Museum expects that by its closure on Aug 17 this year, the exhibition will break more records and become one of the most popular museum shows in the world.

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