JUNE 2025
TO REGISTER: click here, or email shanghaiartdeco@gmail.com
NEW Saturday June 7, 4pm GELATO CRAWL: Heritage Architecture & Gelato /RMB 250 members, 350 nonmembers, includes gelato tasting TO REGISTER, click here.
By popular demand!
When the eighth gelato store opened on a single, very historic Art Deco block in the former French Concession, our mission was clear: a summertime gelato-and-historic-architecture crawl!
Between tastes of a rainbow of gelato flavors, we’ll walk through lanes and plane tree-lined streets to admire one of the city’s most architecturally intact neighborhoods, and the surprises that lie beyond the hipster hangouts: Art Deco delights, traces of pre-Concession Shanghai, hidden mansions, lush gardens, treasures tucked away deep in lanes…and then more gelato! Meeting point details will be emailed upon registration.
Sunday June 8, 2pm ART DECO: Rich, Famous, and Art Deco (Bubbling Well Road edition) /RMB 200 members, 300 nonmembers TO REGISTER, click here.
How did the rich and famous live in Old Shanghai? Glamorously, and famously, in the Art Deco style! They wanted the very latest, and the very best, and in 1930s Shanghai, that meant Art Deco. On this walk in and around the charmingly named Bubbling Well Road, we’ll meet the rich and famous—moguls, philanthropists, writers—hear the stories of the twists and turns of their colorful lives and see the Art Deco places and palaces where they lived, worked, and played. From a breathtaking modernist masterpiece to a Chinese Art Deco jewel, a swanky nightclub, a sleek modernist institute, stylish apartment houses and a surprise of a lane, and much more. Meeting point details will be emailed upon registration.
NEW Saturday June 14, 7.30pm SUMMER MOVIES IN THE GARDEN: “Long Live the Missus”太太万岁 (1947, screenplay by Eileen Chang. 1 hour, 47 minutes) /RMB 100 members, 200 nonmembers
TO REGISTER, click here.
Shanghai Art Deco movies? You bet. Think sumptuous interiors, glamorous fashion, and modernist themes! Join us this summer, when we’ll screen old Shanghai movies in the garden of an historic Wukang Road mansion!
“Long Live the Missus” is a delightful screwball comedy, written by Eileen Chang, and set in civil war-era Shanghai. Chen Sizhen is an eager to please upper-class housewife, married to an ambitious but incompetent bank clerk, Tang Zhiyuan. Tang launches a business with the financial support of his father-in-law, and flush with success, he falls into the clutches of glamorous seductress, Shi Mimi (who steals the show). But then, his deputy embezzles from the company … and things go south from there.
Worth watching for the glamorous qipaos and splendid interiors alone, but the real star is celebrated Shanghai writer Eileen Chang’s screenplay, describing Shanghai modernity in a rapidly changing society as only she could. Drinks will be available onsite, at RMB 50. Venue details will be emailed upon registration.
“Enchanting, and strikingly modernist. Its heroines wear both glamorous cheongsams and tennis shorts, tend to the home and hop on and off planes, and pine for and pick up after men. Even Katharine Hepburn and Barbara Stanwyck would find it hard to keep up in this eye-opening vision of family dynamics, sexual politics, and fabulous fashions in a thoroughly modern China.”
-Jason Sanders, BAMPFA
TO REGISTER, click here, or scan the QR code below.
Questions? Email us at shanghaiartdeco@gmail.com
RECORDINGS: Scan the “Recorded Events” QR code to book and receive event recordings. (For the full list of available recordings, click here
RECORDED ART DECO EVENTS
The Shanghai Art Deco Story
Shanghai’s glamorous Art Deco style was unique, born of a unique time and place: the energy of cosmopolitan Old Shanghai. In this lavishly illustrated talk, we’ll trace the origins of the Shanghai Art Deco style, explore how it could have only come into being at this particular moment in Shanghai, and take a look at its expressions in architecture, fashion, furniture, graphic and industrial design, movies, and more. We’ll take a look at how it influenced the city’s aesthetic and became its signature style, even today. And we’ll share some of our own Art Deco collection!
Members of Historic Shanghai, our parent organization, enjoy discounted prices and other benefits. Interested in joining? Click here.
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