M+ : looking at the world from a Hong Kong perspective

• M+ is the Museum of Art and Visual Culture in Hong Kong that is currently under construction. The new Hong Kong museum will open its doors to the world in 2019. The idea of placing a museum like M+ in the larger cultural infrastructure project of West Kowloon Cultural District (WKCD) came from a group of people that the Hong Kong Government put together in 2006. This group, known as the Museum Advisory Group, was to think through what kind of museum Hong Kong needed besides the already existing museums it already had. The initiative for this new museum thus initially came from the Hong Kong government. The funding comes from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and the decision to move ahead came in 2008–but it took until 2010 until Lars Nittve, at the time director of Moderna Museet in Stockholm, was contacted and asked to become its visionary leader. M+ is a distinct Hong Kong project, looked upon with scepticism from Beijing. This paper puts the project of M+ in the contexts of the rising international interest in contemporary Chinese art after the turn of the millenium, the rising prices on this art on the international market, the rising economic status of contemporary Chinese art on the mainland, adding the ambitious museum building boom on the mainland since around the Shanghai Expo in 2010. What are the main differences between the art museum projects on the mainland and the building of M+ in Hong Kong? How is it to work with this museum project in the Hong Kong SAR environment? What does the existence of a museum like M+ mean to China and the World?

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Konst (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Museums

Art Musem

Hong Kong

M

Lars Nittve

Asian Languages and Cultures

Asiens språk och kulturer

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)