May 2023
The interior courtyard of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem.
PEM is one of the oldest continuously operating museums in the United States and holds one of the major collections of Asian art in the US. Its total holdings include about 1.3 million pieces, as well as twenty-two historic buildings. It is worth a visit!
The museum was remodeled by Safdie Architects and re-opened in 2019. The collection is divine and not to be belittled, but I was excited to see the Yin Yu Tang House, an early 19th-century Chinese house from Anhui Province that had been disassembled in its original village and reconstructed on the museum grounds.
Inside the central courtyard of the Yin Yu Tang House
The second floor of the Yin Yu Tang House
Yin Yu Tang House
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Connecting some of the multiple buildings of the Peabody Essex Museum