Shanghai Propaganda Poster Museum

This has been on my list of places to go and check out for over a year. The guide book instructions were a bit vague, and were followed by "it is a bit of a challenge to find." Thus, when I spotted a young man on the street carrying a bag with the propaganda museum label, I approached him and asked for directions from him- which he was kind enough to give me. It turns out that it is within but a few minutes' walking distance from the apartment, I made a point to go last week.

This one (large) room "museum" is in the basement of a residential apartment building. Notwithstanding, it has an excellent display of a range of Chinese posters used for propaganda from 1949 to 1976. The montage is a bit cheesy; the ceiling is low and it looks as though it is a bit moist in some parts of the room. I understand that they are trying to relocate to another site that will give the collection the respect that it deserves. The walls are covered in paper posters encased in plastic for protection (photos are prohibited)and are arranged according to eras. There are different styles according to the eras, as well as topics. These of course, are located within the political and historical context of their periods and the write ups for each era are quite good. Some of the early artists, had studied abroad and brought with them a sense of European art methods. Others used classic Chinese techniques (there were some faces that were done in the style of the Beijing paintings that I included in a post a couple of months past). The color red, not surprisingly, was prevalent. It's not a huge investment in time (less than an hour) and money (about $3.00), but it is an insight in Chinese Communist politics.

Unfortunately, since the medium is paper, those that were not deliberately destroyed, sometimes just disintegrated and were lost to us. The one man operation has an excellent collection, from which the extras are sold for somewhat dear prices. The assistant care taker asked me which country I came from; when I said I was Canadian, he proceeded to rummage through the display posters. He the showed me a lovely poster of Doctor Norman Bethune sitting at a table with a Chinese person (perhaps a patient). I felt a moment of quiet pride in my country- I had just spent the better part of an hour looking at posters vilifying the American empire, and the only reference to Canada would be in a work that demonstrated one individual's attempt to help the Chinese people. Take that, Yanks!

If you have a little time, have a look at the site. Since photos are not allowed, I borrowed the image at the top of this page from the web site. You will note that even though the "museum" seems a little cheesy, it has enough material to lend to other countries for exhibitions.