{"id":53158,"date":"2024-04-02T23:07:09","date_gmt":"2024-04-02T19:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magpie.ae\/staging4\/?p=53158"},"modified":"2024-04-02T23:07:13","modified_gmt":"2024-04-02T19:07:13","slug":"doing-business-with-hong-kong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magpie.ae\/staging4\/doing-business-with-hong-kong\/","title":{"rendered":"Doing business with Hong Kong"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

During Art Basel Hong Kong (which ran 28-30 March), the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority \u2013 the body that oversees multiple HK museums, including the spectacular M+ museum \u2013 announced that it had signed 20 memoranda of understanding with 21 arts organisations around the world.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The wording on MoUs is always a bit OTT, but the purpose of these Memoranda is basically to formalise long-term relationships \u2013 in this case mainly between M+ (\u201cAsia’s first global museum of contemporary visual culture\u201d) and other art institutions. Those relationships will apply especially to art loans, but might also cover joint commissions and research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s all very calculated, part of buffing up Hong Kong\u2019s international image in the face of the obvious decline in democracy (an expanded security bill was fast-tracked to come into effect on 23 March: apparently pro-democracy protests weren\u2019t wanted at Art Basel Hong Kong) and the protracted slowdown in China\u2019s economy (the Hang Seng Index is approaching lows not seen since the city was returned to the PRC in 1997). Disappointing auction sales suggest the art market has not been immune to these buffets. The aim of moves like the Culture Summit run and these MoU announcements is to depict Hong Kong as \u201cthe East-meets-West centre for international cultural exchange\u201d, though there is an undercurrent of \u201cwe\u2019re the regional art capital, so spend your money here\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The MoU signatories included Centre Pompidou, the Tate, and locally the Qatar Museums and Sharjah Art Foundation. Sheikha Nawar Al Qassimi, VP of SAF called their MoU \u201can important step\u201d which she was \u201cthrilled\u201d to be taking. There\u2019s already a concrete example of collaboration \u2013 The Peacock\u2019s Graveyard<\/em> by Amar Kanwar, which premiered at Sharjah Biennial 15 last year, is currently on show at M+ as part of the\u00a0Shanshui: Echoes and Signals\u00a0exhibition as a co-commission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Amar Kanwar\u2019s The Peacock\u2019s Graveyard<\/em> (2023), currently showing at M+ and originally commissioned for SB15, is a multi-channel installation which weaves together images and sounds that meditate on the transience of existence<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The elephant in the room is of course the implied censorship that comes with any institutional activity in Hong Kong these days. M+ was planned in more liberal days, but on its inauguration in 2021 the chairman of the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority Board \u2013 the MoU signer \u2013 declared that “the opening of M+ does not mean that artistic expression is above the law. It is not.” He later amplified this: \u201cas a public museum, we have the responsibility to comply with the law and respect a society\u2019s cultural standard\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A donation by the Swiss benefactor Uli Sigg, a gift of some 1,463 works by 325 mainly Chinese artists, forms the basis of the M+ permanent collection. But some of them will never be shown \u2013 notably a series of photos by Ai Weiwei that have the artist raising a middle finger at key sites of power like\u00a0Tiananmen Square. These apparently endanger national security and incite hatred against China. (For the sake of balance, it\u2019s worth pointing out that several Ai Weiwei works are or have been on display at M+; and the museum authorities have said that the removal of apparently political works from the Sigg bequest by Wang Xingwei, Zhou Tiehai and Wang Guangyi are just rehang rotations, not censorship.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the Middle East institutions effectively operate their own (unstated) ban on anything explicitly political or potentially offensive \u2013 with the exception of work criticising Israel over Palestine \u2013 none of this is going to be a problem. It might be more of an issue for the MoU signers from the West, though they would argue that their involvement could help to keep M+ culturally pure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

M+ is undoubtedly an important museum, already one of the most important contemporary art institutions in Asia and well on the way to must-see status for tourists. With 2.8 million visitors last year it\u2019s already the world’s 15th most visited museum (according to the recent published Art Newspaper Visitor Figures 2023 survey<\/a>) even though it only opened in 2021. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The museum is intended to rival MoMA New York, Tate Modern and the\u00a0Centre Pompidou for the breadth and importance of its collection, which focuses on 20th- and 21st-century visual culture \u2013 visual art, design and architecture, and moving image, with a particular focus on Hong Kong visual culture. (Incidentally, last year those target museums had visitor totals of 5.4 million, 4.7 million, and 2.6 million respectively.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Architecturally, it\u2019s been worth it. The design, by\u00a0Herzog & de Meuron\u00a0and\u00a0Farrells, is basically an upside-down T; the main horizontal section floats about a pedestrianised area and houses the exhibition spaces (around 17,200m2<\/sup> of the 65,000m2<\/sup> total), while the slab-like tower above it has restaurants, offices, labs and suchlike facilities. It looks solid and uncompromising, which probably appealed, and a massive LED display sits on the facade to display works of art and\/or advertise M+\u2019s presence. If you\u2019re visiting the city, you can\u2019t miss it; and nor should you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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During Art Basel Hong Kong (which ran 28-30 March), the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority \u2013 the body that oversees multiple HK museums, including the spectacular M+ museum \u2013 announced that it had signed 20 memoranda of understanding with 21 [… more]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":53166,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[208,146],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-institutions","category-museums"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magpie.ae\/staging4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magpie.ae\/staging4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magpie.ae\/staging4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magpie.ae\/staging4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magpie.ae\/staging4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/magpie.ae\/staging4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magpie.ae\/staging4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magpie.ae\/staging4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magpie.ae\/staging4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magpie.ae\/staging4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}