Guangdong Times Museum is a non-profit institution, and Times China has been its core funder since its inauguration. Co-founded by Times Property, now known as Times China, and Guangdong Museum of Art (GDMoA), Times Museum was set up as a branch of GDMoA at Times Rose Garden in 2003.

When Wang Huangsheng, former director of GDMoA, along with art curators Hou Hanru and Hans Ulrich Obrist, invited renowned architects Rem Koolhaas and Alain Fouraux to conceptualize an architectural proposal in the D-Lab of the second Guangzhou Triennial in 2005, they wanted to turn the museum into a hub for artistic experiments in the Pearl River Delta region. On Dec 31, 2010, the museum became an independent institution and officially opened its doors to the public. In November 2018, the museum initiated Times Art Center Berlin as its parallel institution in Europe with the support of Times China. 

Every year, the museum programs four to six exhibitions in its gallery space, introduces numerous artists and artworks to the city of Guangzhou, and commissions more than a dozen new works. Apart from reaching out to its audience through curated events on a weekly basis, it also engages both artists and the public to develop ideas, produce artworks, and test receptions. The museum values its public role as a cultural institution and endeavors to formulate conversations and document social changes. 

It celebrates the social values of culture and embraces its communities at home and abroad. The museum attempts to indigenize the language of contemporary art while supporting artists to present critical ideas and produce ambitious works. By creating a network of thinkers, artists, and initiatives across regions and cultures, the museum is making both itself and Guangzhou a great place for art goers and cultural producers. After a decade of robust programming, Guangdong Times Museum has become a cultural landmark in the city where people can discover art, connect with each other, and feel inspired by unexpected learnings and worldly experiences.

Guangdong Times Museum [Photo by Iwan Baan/timesmuseum.org]

The different functionalities of the museum are distributed over different floors of a residential building and have become an interweaved structure of everyday life and living space. The museum’s entrance is on the ground floor and is open to the street. It includes the Banyan Commune Space, a cafeteria, and a multifunctional hall. With a height of 7.8 meters, the lobby is a good place to hold a variety of public events. Its office area on the 14th floor was converted from three apartments. The museum has its own elevator which goes vertically through the whole building and arrives directly at the exhibition hall on the 19th floor. The exhibition hall is equipped with a 75-by-12 meter light-weighted mega-sized roof. From its balcony and two glasshouses, visitors can overlook northern Guangzhou’s landscape, which is a typical yet distinctive urban-rural area of convergence. Through its uniquely designed roof windows, the skylight provides natural light to the main exhibition hall. The roofs of high-rise buildings in the estate fit perfectly as visual elements of the exhibition wall. The mezzanine on the top floor is used as an archival reading room, while the basement is used for storage.

Address: Times Rose Garden Phase III, Huangbian North Road, Baiyun Avenue, Baiyun district, Guangzhou, China

Zip code: 510440

Opening Hours: 10:00 am to 6:00 pm

Tel: +86-020-26272363

Fax: +86-020-26270660

Website: https://timesmuseum.org/en