Built and put into use in September 2011, Suzhou Municipal Center of Public Culture is one of Suzhou’s key public cultural facilities and cultural landmark projects. It is a non-profit institutional organization affiliated with Suzhou Bureau of Culture, Broadcasting, Television, Press and Publication. It aims to provide public culture service featured with non-profit, fundamentality, equalization and convenience. Its main functions are to safeguard the people’s right to entertain themselves with basic culture and participate in public cultural activities, to provide the society with free cultural services.
The Public Culture Center contains several art museums, namely, Suzhou Cultural Center, Suzhou Art Museum, Suzhou Celebrity Museum, Wuzuoren Art Museum (Suzhou Seal Cutting Art Academy), Yanwenliang Memorial Hall (Suzhou Oil Painting Academy), Suzhou Woodcut Printing Academy (Suzhou Taohuawu New-year Painting Museum), Suzhou Powder Painting Art Academy (Hangmingshi Powder Painting Art Gallery), Suzhou Academy of Public Arts. Its main responsibilities are as follows: the plan and organization of urban and rural mass culture activities, the literary and art training for the mass, the theoretical researches on mass culture subject, the process of artistic creation, collection, exhibition, education and academic construction, the inheritance and innovation of arts, the collection, preservation, exhibition, renovation and research of famous towns’ and celebrities’ data in Suzhou. Besides, it holds art training both professional and amateur, carries out scientific research on arts, promotes the general survey, the protection, the exhibition, the research, the inheritance and popularization of intangible cultural heritages in Suzhou, organizes domestic and foreign culture and art exchange activities.
The main building of the center is located in No. 2075 of Renmin Road, with a total area of 33,400 square meters. It is in harmonious combination with the historical image of Taohuawu Block in the aspects of landscape morphology, cultural activities and heritage protection. It is a modern public culture service center in the ancient town of Suzhou that combines the functions of public cultural activity, art display and exhibition, patriotism education, intangible cultural heritage exhibition and the citizens’ leisure tourism.There are many first-rate facilities in the Suzhou Art Museum, such as a large exhibition hall of 800square meters, 4 small exhibition halls ranging from 300 to 400 square meters, an exhibition hall of constant temperature and humidity, a citizen art gallery and 121 multi-functional academic halls, etc.
Suzhou Cultural Center, a first-class national cultural center named by the Ministry of Culture. There is a multi-functional theater which can accommodate 523 spectators and 3 academic halls which can hold 200 audiences. Besides, it is equipped with public cultural facilities such as public e-reading room, dance rehearsal room, piano room, training room and recording studio, etc.
Suzhou Celebrity Museum covers an area of 1500 square meters. What are exhibited in the museum are 447 historical celebrities of Suzhou and the exhibitions are arranged in both traditional and modernized ways. With the help of multimedia, extra-large circular screen, circular electrolysis screen, spectra vision and scene sculpture, the museum shows the charm and main achievements of the celebrities in an intellectual, interesting, entertaining and participatory way.