The exhibition Spring: A Celebration of the Year of the Snake from Tuesday to March 2 will feature 13 objects selected from the Shanghai Museum collection, including borrowed pieces from the first museum in China dedicated to bronze art in Lijiashan site in Yunnan province, and Hubei Provincial Museum.

"We want visitors to learn about how the legends of the snake are passed down and have evolved over millennia in Chinese civilization, and to understand how the shared culture connects people of different ethnic groups across the country," Chu says.

One of the most anticipated exhibitions of the new year is the fifth installment of Shanghai Museum's series A Dialogue with the World, featuring Impressionist masterpieces from the Pola Museum in Japan, scheduled from Jan 22 to April 21.