China Art Museum, Shanghai

Start with the colour. Stand back on the wide plaza and let your eyes travel upward. A deep, warm red fills the sky above you, and the building seems to grow heavier as it rises. The top is wider than the bottom. On a bright day the red glows almost orange at the edges. On a grey Shanghai afternoon it turns darker, closer to the colour of old lacquer. Either way, it is hard to look anywhere else.

This is the China Art Museum, in Pudong, on the eastern side of the Huangpu River. Before it held paintings, it held a nation's image. The building was first the China Pavilion at the World Expo of 2010. That year, millions of visitors queued across this ground to step inside. Many Chinese visitors still call it by its Expo nickname, the Crown of the East. When the Expo closed, the city chose to keep the pavilion and give it a new life.

That new life began in 2012, when the museum opened its doors. It inherited much of its collection and mission from the older Shanghai Art Museum. That earlier museum had its home in Puxi, on the western side of the river, in a historic building near People's Square. So the institution crossed the river, and moved from a colonial-era building into one of the boldest structures of the new century. The move tells a small story about Shanghai itself.

Now look closely at the shape above you. The design team, led by the architect He Jingtang, drew on an old element of Chinese timber building called the dougong. A dougong is a cluster of interlocking wooden brackets. It sits on top of a column and spreads the weight of a heavy roof. You can find dougong in temples and palaces across China, often painted in bright colours. Here, the same idea is scaled up to the size of a city block.

Notice how the beams step outward, layer after layer, like stacked hands holding up a tray. Traditional brackets were made of wood and fitted together without nails. This version is steel and concrete, but the logic is the same. Each layer carries the one above it. Here is something many visitors miss. The great red hall does not sit on its walls. It rests on four massive square cores, one at each corner, and the ground beneath the hall stays open.

Walk into that open space under the red hall. The air here feels different. It is shaded, a little cooler, and the sound of the plaza drops away. Look straight up and you can see the underside of the structure, the beams crossing over your head. In summer, this shade is a welcome relief. Families sit near the pillars, and children run between them. It is a public room without walls.

Inside, the scale continues. Long escalators carry you up through the building, and the rise is steep. The main galleries spread across several levels, and the floors are wide and generous. Allow more time than you expect. Many visitors come for one exhibition and find themselves walking for two or three hours. The building rewards a slow pace, with benches in quieter corners where you can rest your feet.

The museum focuses on modern and contemporary Chinese art. Much of its permanent display traces the story of Chinese painting from the late nineteenth century to the present. You will see ink painting, oil painting, prints and sculpture. One important thread is the Shanghai school. This was a circle of painters who worked in the city as it grew into a busy trading port. They mixed classical brush techniques with fresh subjects and brighter colours, and they painted for a new class of city buyers.

Look for the tension between ink and oil as you move through the rooms. In the twentieth century, Chinese artists debated how to absorb Western techniques without losing their own traditions. Some chose oil paint and realist drawing. Others kept the brush and the ink stone, but changed what they painted. Walking from room to room, you can follow that conversation on the walls. You do not need to know the names to feel the shift in style.

Here is a second surprise. During the Expo, the pavilion's most talked-about exhibit was not a painting on a wall. It was an animated, room-length digital version of a famous scroll, Along the River During the Qingming Festival. The original is a long painting from the Song dynasty, more than nine hundred years ago, showing daily life along a river. In the digital version, tiny figures walk, boats drift and lanterns glow. Ask at the entrance whether it is on view during your visit.

Temporary exhibitions change often, and they can be very large. Some bring national collections to Shanghai. Others focus on a single artist or a single theme. The bare, high galleries suit big installations and long sequences of paintings. Because the programme moves, two visits a year apart can feel like visits to two different museums. Check what is on before you come, and look at the posters on the plaza as you arrive.

When you step back outside, take in the wider setting. This whole district was the Expo site. Wide avenues, open lawns and a few other surviving pavilions sit around you. The pace here is calmer than the old streets of Puxi. Across the river, in a former power station, sits the Power Station of Art, a museum for contemporary work. Together, the two buildings turned old industrial and Expo land into a new cultural edge of the city.

Before you leave, walk to the far side of the plaza and turn around once more. Watch how the red hall changes as the light moves. Look at the beam ends, and at the shadows that fall in neat rows between them. Listen to the wind across the open ground, and the voices of people gathered under the hall. This building was made to show a country to the world. Today it simply holds art, and shade, and an afternoon for anyone who walks in.