Today Art Museum

This guide starts inside the twelve-meter-high shell of a former brewery boiler workshop in Beijing, built to vent the heat of giant machines rather than to hold art. It follows businessman Zhang Baoquan's decision in 2002 to open a private, nonprofit art museum here at a time when almost nothing like it existed in China, and architect Wang Hui's choice to keep the building's rough industrial bones intact. You'll hear about the bold zigzag metal staircase he added through the space. Look up at the exposed iron beams as you walk beneath them.