After a six-month facelift, the Shenzhen Art Museum reopened Thursday with the exhibition Urban Skin: Research on Potentials of Contemporary Urban Images.

The renovation has given the city's oldest museum a thoroughly modern look with glass and dark ceramic tile walls.

"As the first museum in the city, the Shenzhen Art Museum has witnessed the city's art development over the past 30 years," the museum's newly appointed curator, Song Yuming, said at the exhibition's opening ceremony.

Located inside scenic East Lake (Donghu) Park, the museum opened in 1976 as the Shenzhen Exhibition Hall. The first exhibit, a Guangdong Province fine arts show, was a major cultural event for the small pre-special-economic-zone town.

In the following years, the exhibition hall played an important role in promoting and popularizing traditional Chinese art and culture, with artists from all over the country invited to exhibit their works.

In 1981, in cooperation with the Hong Kong Pok Art Co., Ltd., the exhibition hall established the Shenzhen Pok Art Gallery, the city's first cultural joint venture.

Two years later, the exhibition hall was incorporated into Shenzhen Pok Art Co., Ltd. with support from the Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Culture.

In 1985, the exhibition hall held the Shenzhen Fine Arts Festival, the first major art event since the country began opening to the outside world in the late 1970s. More than 30 leading Chinese painters, including Guan Shanyue and Wu Guanzhong, exhibited their work.

The Shenzhen Exhibition Hall was renamed the Shenzhen Art Museum in 1987, but it no longer had a monopoly on cultural exhibitions in the rapidly developing city. The Shenzhen Fine Art Institute opened that same year, and the Shenzhen Museum opened in 1988.

To find a place for itself on the city's expanding cultural map, in 2002 the Shenzhen Art Museum defined its main goal as focusing on contemporary urban art, including encouraging local art.

 "In today's world, museums are not only places to spread culture and popularize art. They should also play a role in building new art and culture," Song said.

Since 2002, the Shenzhen Art Museum has run a series of shows for local artists, including the Shenzhen Abstract Paintings Show and Joint Exhibition for Shenzhen Water Color Painters.

The museum's collection has more than 2,000 works by artists from home and abroad. The museum is planning traveling exhibits from its collection in the city's six districts to make art accessible to more residents.

To emphasize the museum's focus on urban art, the 30th anniversary exhibition, Urban Skin examines city life as seen in the gray sky of urban areas, traffic signs, roads and beyond.

The show, in Shenzhen after opening in Macao, brings together photographs, posters, videos and installations by 29 mainland and Macao artists.

(Shenzhen Daily August 15, 2006)