Nanjing Museum was one of the earliest modern museums of China. It comes from the arrangement committee of National Central Museum, proposed by Chinese renowned educationist Cai Yuanpei in 1933, director of Academy of Science at the time. By purchasing, collecting and excavating, 200,000 to 300,000 pieces of finest objects formed the collection, including Portrait of Emperors and Empresses, Emperor Ming Huang of Tang Dynasty inspect Shu, Bronze Mao Gong tripod, Si Mu Wu tripod, very rare and unique cultural relic.

　　Since the foundation of new China in 1949, with the strong support from the State government Nanjing Museum has been made great achievement and developed into a modern comprehensive museum. To promote the safekeeping of the collection, Museum constructed new storage of 3000 square meters, in addition to the original display area of about 2390 square meters, a brand new display hall of 2400 square meters accomplished too. There are now 3 permanent exhibitions opened for daily visitors, including Five Thousand years civilization of low reach of Yangtze River, Yesterday's life--motherland's history, nationality & culture, Archaeology achievements of Jiangsu.

　　At present stage, Nanjing Museum has a collection of 420,000 pieces, more 2,000 of them with State Treasure class or State first class. Traditional Chinese Calligraphy and Paintings accounts for more than 30,000, some from Song & Yuan Period finest for the collection. Also the excavation findings from recent archaeological work form the most precious collections. There are also 300,000 volumes book and archive collection of the Library, including some very rare version of ancient publishes.

　　In the history of Nanjing Museum, they have organized about 300 exhibitions. Visitors totaled for 12 million, half a million from abroad.