Since the opening of M+ in November 2021, the museum’s positioning has been distorted from the original Hong Kong visual culture-based orientation to the current focus on the model of Western contemporary art. Such distortion affects Hong Kong’s long-term cultural development and cultural security. For Hong Kong to develop into a center for cultural exchange between the East and the West, it must establish a management system that nurtures its residents to be culturally autonomous, self-reliant and confident.
The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government spent tens of billions of dollars on M+. As a museum with the largest investment in Hong Kong, it needs a Chinese-oriented international positioning. Ever since its opening, M+ has simply trodden on the heels of Tate Modern in London in terms of exhibitions, curatorial quality and strategy. For example, the most controversial part of M+ is its acquisition of the contemporary art collection of Swiss collector Uli Sigg. According to the M+ official website, the Sigg Collection is one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of Chinese contemporary art in the world. However, what does this collection have to do with Hong Kong? Can M+ really help Hong Kong build up its cultural confidence and establish itself as a center of cultural exchange between China and other countries?
Western-standard contemporary art constitutes only a segment of the world’s visual culture, not the whole. Now M+ monopolizes the discourse power of visual culture with Western-standard contemporary art. What is visual culture? When the Legislative Council allocated public funds for setting up M+, it clearly stated that visual culture includes four areas: design, popular culture, moving image and visual art (including ink art). Although M+ follows these four groupings of visual culture, its curatorial teams with their academic and work backgrounds are basically lacking in the knowledge of the visual cultural backgrounds of Hong Kong and Asia since they are mostly trained by the British and American contemporary art education systems.
The current M+ collection is basically just a combined replica of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Tate Modern in London. M+’s purchase of a Tokyo sushi bar for the astronomical price of HK$15 million ($1.92 million) is already an international joke. When local artists in Hong Kong are unable to find space to exhibit their works; when local artists can barely find sufficient resources to create and develop their art, the decision to allow M+ and the West Kowloon Cultural District to spend public funds in such a manner simply beggars belief, and that itself demands detailed research and analysis.
Research means conducting investigation and analysis through surveys and data collection. To analyze the problems of M+, first of all we need to look at the curatorial team, which does not seem to have a deep understanding of Asian culture.
The original goal for Hong Kong in spending so much public money to invest in a large-scale museum was to promote and nurture the visual cultural characteristics of Hong Kong. What has become of it? We need to be culturally autonomous, self-reliant and confident first before we can say we are culturally secure. Being culturally autonomous and self-reliant is in no way exclusionist. When we talk about fostering international exposure, the model of biennial or thematic exhibitions can be adopted, and international curators can be invited to curate exhibitions. Through the curatorial process, Hong Kong’s local curators have a chance to learn how to curate, and eventually having Hong Kong’s own curatorial teams. Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan have all established their own curatorial teams, but Hong Kong is still relying on “foreign aid”. Can this approach foster the development of Hong Kong’s local art in the long run? What Hong Kong urgently needs is to build its own strong curatorial teams.
How can we reform M+ so that it is in line with Hong Kong being more culturally autonomous, culturally self-reliant and culturally secure as well as culturally diverse? For a place to have sound cultural development, it must be culturally secure first, but how to proceed? Actually, there are some important works in the M+ Uli Sigg collection. The collection era (1972-2012) also signifies a crucial embryonic stage of Chinese contemporary art. During that period, many ambassadors of European countries stationed in China provided great support to Chinese contemporary artists.
Collecting and curating Chinese contemporary art should be in the hands of genuine contemporary art experts. I think the M+ Uli Sigg collection should be open to influential Chinese curators, such as Professor Fan Di’an, president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts; Professor Hou Hanru, the well-known international curator; or Professor Wu Hung, the esteemed art historian of the University of Chicago. They are all distinguished leaders in the field of curating and researching Chinese contemporary art. We should invite them to work with M+ and take the lead to open a museum for Chinese contemporary art. With these influential curators, exhibitions of Chinese contemporary art can be curated in a decent and pragmatic manner.
I believe the current team of M+ is not an ideal one, and restructuring is urgently needed. We are not promoting exclusionism but are talking about finding suitable experts who really care about the development of art in Hong Kong and have the competence to take charge. The museum complex, from venue exhibitions, layouts and facilities to retail shop management and operation, lacks local Hong Kong characteristics. Another serious problem is that food and beverages provided by the eateries in the museum are so pricy that they are mostly out of reach of the general public
The development of Chinese contemporary art is closely linked with the country’s reform and opening-up. While indicating the progress of Chinese society, contemporary Chinese art also reflects the response and dialogue made by society at that time responding to the reform and opening-up. They are a very important and valuable legacy of the time, and hence should not be exclusive to collectors like Uli Sigg. To reform M+, the curating of the Uli Sigg collection and other collections should be handed over to real experts of Chinese contemporary art. There are also some collector-curators in Hong Kong highly eligible for the curating task of contemporary Chinese art. For example, Johnson Chang, the curator of the famous exhibition China’s New Art, Post-1989, is one of these rare experts.
After all, the most important thing is to nurture Hong Kong curators with a Chinese and global perspective. One of the key strategies is to nurture curators who are specialized in Chinese contemporary art, and we can see some young curators who have been nurtured and have emerged in the Chinese mainland. If there is no reform for M+, the place will only be reduced to a kind of sales promotion mall for expensive high-end brand-name consumer products. The recent Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now retrospective exhibition has said it all as it itself is more like a promotion event for designer handbags. If the West Kowloon Cultural District is just a venue serving the sales and promotion of expensive foreign brand-name consumer goods, how can it be down-to-earth, serving the general public of Hong Kong? How can it build a connection with the general public of Hong Kong? That’s a real cultural security issue.
A place needs diversity in order to deal with issues related to cultural security. And diversity needs to be knowledge-based and requires intellectual discourses. The core spirit of contemporary art is to criticize the notion of making art purely as a financial investment. However, contemporary art has now been hijacked by art investment. Contemporary art itself has been reduced to a social phenomenon as a study, totally losing its critical interactive competence. The fees charged by M+ are too high for the general public. The shops inside M+ are outlets solely for a few Western publishers. Their goods are lacking in diversity and do not cater to Asian tastes. Products related to Asian culture are seriously missing.
What a waste to see the sprawling M+ complex so underused while many seasoned and highly accomplished artists in Hong Kong are struggling to look for space to exhibit their works. Shouldn’t M+ open up and become a real visual art museum for long-term exhibitions, introducing the complexity of art and visual culture in simple terms to the general public?
For a place to be culturally secure, the prerequisite is soft power, which depends largely on a talented workforce and supporting teams. Curators are a crucial integral part of this soft power. For talented artists to make achievements without unnecessary hindrances, they also need curators who have the knowledge of art and hence possess competence to appreciate art. Therefore, if there is no reform for M+, it will be extremely difficult for Hong Kong to become a real center of cultural exchange between China and other countries. Hong Kong will remain merely an art investment market controlled by the West.
The key aspect about the development of art is the ability to create and influence the discourses on art so that the competence of creating a market and its value can be secure. What M+ is doing now is to turn our own venue into the headquarters of Western art, forcing Hong Kong to surrender its potential of influencing art development in the West. The word “exchange” in Hong Kong’s role as a cultural exchange center for China and other countries is about mutual influence. If the influence is only made one-sided by the West, how does it measure up to being a center for “exchange”?
M+ should carry out the following reforms: First, set up a Chinese contemporary art museum based on the Uli Sigg collection by a curatorial team composed of mainland and world-class experts with a deep understanding of Chinese contemporary art. Its positioning is to channel understanding of contemporary Chinese society through Chinese contemporary art.
Second, build up a Hong Kong-based curatorial team for M+. Shall we resume organizing the Hong Kong Art Biennial Exhibition, or launching a brand-new Hong Kong Visual Culture and Art Biennial Exhibition? We can refer to the practices of the Berlin Biennale or the Venice Biennale for inspiration. Another reference to be made is Singapore Art Week, which holds exhibitions, art seminars and workshops.
Third, M+ should carry out studies on how to reach out to communities in Hong Kong. There are 18 districts in Hong Kong where M+ can reach out to by bringing different types of community creations and exhibitions in order to truly put popularization of visual art into practice, reaching more of the general public.
Fourth, thorough research on visual culture must be conducted. A team is to be formed with experts who are well-versed in the studies of Hong Kong visual culture and popular culture. The team can conduct a series of research plans — for example, conducting systematic data collection and research for representative pop culture figures such as Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing, Anita Mui Yim-fong and Bruce Lee for entertainment culture; Hong Kong should focus on developing its cultural strengths such as comics, TV, movies and pop songs; in terms of design, there should be a research project on the history of design in Hong Kong.
I believe the current team of M+ is not an ideal one, and restructuring is urgently needed. We are not promoting exclusionism but are talking about finding suitable experts who really care about the development of art in Hong Kong and have the competence to take charge. The museum complex, from venue exhibitions, layouts and facilities to retail shop management and operation, lacks local Hong Kong characteristics. Another serious problem is that food and beverages provided by the eateries in the museum are so pricy that they are mostly out of reach of the general public.
All in all, M+ must carry out reforms systematically, readjusting the curatorial direction, nurturing local artists and curatorial teams so that Hong Kong’s visual culture can be promoted, and M+’s functions and significance can be truly put into practice as laid out in its original plan approved by the Legislative Council.
The author is a member of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macao Studies and artistic director of Zuni Icosahedron.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
