Xing Zhao (Inter)Dependency: Privately Owned Art Museums in State-Sponsored West Bund

oughly a century ago, fan shops in Shanghai started commissioning art for the nouveau riche, representing and marketing artists, as Rwell as reaching out for potential collectors, which made the shops by all means a prototype of a commercial gallery. This not only led to a flourishing art scene, but also, more importantly, introduced an alternative type of patronage, and the result was that Shanghai became a leading site for art in modern China. Today, the former treaty port that has grown into a megacity and a global financial centre always seeks to materialize the intangible values in stimulating consumption from its unique urban culture. However, up until ten years ago, there were not many exhibition spaces dedicated to the arts, especially those housing contemporary art. Urban residents and tourists barely frequented commercial galleries until several clusters of galleries became must-see attractions. Under a national five-year plan to promote culture by building more museums, the latest grand state-run project is called the West Bund Cultural Corridor. The government’s decision not only to have more art museums, but also to create spatial proximity among the new institutions, is understandable because “first, cultural industries have important economic and social impact; and, second, the social milieu is a decisive means by which economic transactions occur both in cultural industries and knowledge- intensive sectors more generally.”1

This essay analyzes the West Bund Cultural Corridor as a newly emerging destination for arts and culture, with a focus on the relationship between the state-planned nature of the area and the privately owned art museums established at the founder’s will (there are no tax exemptions or other benefits associated with running a museum or donating artworks in mainland China). I will show that the Xuhui District government of Shanghai, which is in charge of the West Bund project, has learned lessons from failed examples of other arts districts, and, so, by putting a considerable amount of thought into selecting the founders rather than interfering in their managerial and artistic conduct, the project has attracted top collectors to launch their institutions. Driven by a consumption-based, high-end lifestyle and life experience promoted in the West Bund area, the museum founders are enjoying the hybridity of arts and commerce, which will partially and potentially pay back the high cost of running a museum—a problem for museum founders worldwide. However, it is too early to give a round of applause to the long-criticized cultural personnel and private art museum founders in China. A lack of professionalism shown in the newly opened art museums will eventually prevent the institutions from evolving into a sustainable public space that benefits society.

30 Vol. 17 No. 1 Long Museum, West Bund, Shanghai.

Yuz Museum, West Bund, Shanghai. Courtesy of Yuz Museum, Shanghai.

West Bund Art & Design, It is commonly agreed that the 2016, West Bund Art Center, Shanghai. determinant, if not sole, force that is causing the current museum fever and the pursuit of the West Bund project is the government’s plan. As critic Barbara Pollack puts it, “Shanghai’s impulse to build so many museums is the direct result of a governmental five-year plan for the city to become an artistic centre on par with London, Paris, and New York. Not satisfied with the large number of museums already in existence, the Shanghai government has decided to develop a section of the Huangpu River as the West Bund Cultural Corridor.”2 While the government is in charge of the urban plan as well as improvement in infrastructure and transportation, the vision is largely being realized by individual collectors, entrepreneurs, and foreign investors at their own initiative and for various reasons. A few privately owned art museums have laid the foundation of the area, differentiating West Bund from a typical state-run cultural site or another cluster of commercial galleries. Long Museum West Bund, which opened in 2014, is on the former site of a wharf for coal transportation. It was founded by collector Liu Yiqian and his wife Wang Wei as their second location for art exhibitions. It is designed by Shanghai-based architects from Atelier Deshaus and features a cantilevered structure bearing a vault- umbrella with independent walls. The building covers an area of 33,000 square metres, reserving up to 16,000 square metres for exhibition space. Opening in May 2014, the Chinese-Indonesian tycoon Budi Tek’s Yuz Museum Shanghai was the second major privately owned art museum in the West Bund area. Housed inside a former hangar of the Longhua Airport and repurposed by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto, the venue boasts a total area of 9,000 square metres, Initiated in 2015 by world-renowned photographer Liu Heung Shing, the Shanghai Center of Photography

Vol. 17 No. 1 31 (ScôP), the first public art space Façade and interior view of Shanghai Center of in Shanghai dedicated solely to Photography, West Bund. Courtesy of Shanghai Center photography, is one of the latest of Photography. creative additions to West Bund, and is next door to the West Bund Art Center, which houses West Bund Art & Design annually. SCoP’s unique space is designed by the US-based architectural duo Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee and contains a number of elliptical-shaped exhibition spaces. Collector Qiao Zhibing runs two institutions in the West Bund area, Tank Shanghai and Qiao Space. Tank Shanghai is not in full operation at the time of this writing, although it was planned earlier than some of the other enterprises. Some sources have said that a number of international artists have received commissions and agreed to create works for the five buildings of Tank Shanghai, which is scheduled to open in 2017. Qiao Space consists of a two-story studio next to the West Bund Art Center, along with a few commercial galleries as well as artists’ and architects’ studios.Qiao Space opened in 2015 and hosted a show of paintings by the Polish artist Wilhelm Sasnal in cooperation with the commercial gallery Hauser & Wirth and held simultaneously with the 2015 West Bund Art & Design. In addition, the state-owned West Bund Art Museum, designed by David Chipperfield Architects, which is famous for its designs of cultural and civic buildings, is under construction and is planned to join the artistic panorama soon.

The planners of the West Bund Cultural Corridor took the advantage of moving forward later than other either state-planned or naturally formed arts districts within and outside China, and they learned lessons from it. This seemingly more sustainable plan does not anticipate a decline and has attracted collectors to jump into the adventure and risk of opening and running an art museum. The intended nature of the district promotes a lifestyle and a multidimensional urban ecosystem rather than focusing on an arts agenda derived only from idealism. This encourages collectors to believe that they can experiment with this hybridity and the merging

32 Vol. 17 No. 1 Entrance to Qiao Space, Shanghai, 2015. Courtesy of Qiao Space, Shanghai.

Wilhelm Sasnel, exhibition view, Qiao Space, Shanghai, organized in cooperation with Hauser & Wirth. Courtesy of Qiao Space, Shanghai.

Proposed site of TANK SHANGHAI, West Bund Cultural Corridor, Shanghai. Courtesy of TANK SHANGHAI, Shanghai.

Open Architecture, rendering of TANK SHANGHAI. Courtesy of TANK SHANGHAI, Shanghai.

of art and business, which will provide a brighter future for the museum’s sustainability due to possible profitability. Besides multidimensionality and lifestyle as selling points, the role played by the government is more service-

Vol. 17 No. 1 33 than authority-based. All these reasons contribute to the formation of the infrastructural clustering and how it currently looks, although time is still needed to test the sustainability and the comparative advantage of the West Bund Cultural Corridor.

Left: Songzhuang Artist Village, Beijing. Right: Entrance to 798 Art Zone, Beijing.

Shockingly pessimistic titles given to media articles about arts districts, private museums, and once-passionate collectors in China may be exaggerated, but they are not mere click bait. In October 2015, a commentary titled “Starving Artists from Songzhuang Artist Village (Beijing) Became Homeless and The Art Village in Nanjing Is Now a Ghost Town” appeared on the website of China National Radio.3 This was roughly a decade after Hu Jiebao, secretary of the Party Committee in Songzhuang from 2004 to 2012, announced the seemingly feasible and creative plan to let “culture form a town.”4 Similar articles on the decline of Songzhuang have come out in recent years, among them, in 2014, “Unescapable Rise and Fall: Original Art Gradually Disappears in Songzhuang,”5 which accused a local government of over-involvement that quickly resulted in commercialization, an influx of official art and artists, and a loss of originality both in the artwork and in the community’s artistic milieu among Songzhuang artists. A similar question was posed about the 798 Art Zone in a 2013 article, “Can 798 Overcome the Destined Collapse of the Art Zone?”6 798 is a different case from that of Songzhuang. Songzhuang’s vitality, recognized by its more senior residents, comes from the excitement of the non-institutional and non-official—the satisfaction of seeming to be alternative. It is a subcultural community that suffers and benefits from its distance from mainstream culture and commercialization. In Songzhuang, the sense of exile, marginalization, poverty, and lack of recognition is believed to be the soul of the place, which explains its vulnerability to influence from commercialization and its opposition to government intervention into art. In contrast, according to the article on 798, the government played the role of protector in a few cases; for example, when the property management company abruptly shut down an art festival in 2004 because “the organizers did not complete proper application paperwork” as printed on the “open letter to all tenants.” The 798 Art Zone became a must-see at the edge of the city during the 2008 Olympics, and it was even called by officials a “cultural name card of Beijing.”7 The anonymous author of the 798 article lays out the destiny of an art sector whose earliest residents were poor artists, followed by commercial galleries, then the design and fashion industry, and finally a leisure sector of high-end restaurants, boutiques, and art museums. This evolution is exemplified by a few historical recurrences worldwide, especially in Europe and the United States, in that they are forerunners who introduced art sectors into the urban scene. Thus, the author calls for stronger and more direct government support to protect all art zones from

34 Vol. 17 No. 1 Gao Brothers cafe, 798 Art replacement by other businesses. Zone, Beijing. Coincidently, a few commentators have viewed 798 in its future phase as similar to that of Songzhuang, presumably in the case that both fall into the destined path of an art zone’s life cycle. This is clearly demonstrated in the word “yet” in a CNN commentary, “One thing to know about Songzhuang is it is not, yet, a 798, the famous, and some say overly commercialized art district in Beijing often overrun with tourists, expats, and posh hipster Chinese.”8

‘85 New Wave: The Birth of A very simple and self-explanatory factor—rent—helps us map out the Chinese Contemporary Art, inaugural exhibition at Ullens nomadic art scene at 798 in a comprehensive way, and rising rent is one Center for Contemporary Art, November 5, 2007, 798 Art of the most crucial actions anticipated by art professionals from the Zone, Beijing. government. Reportedly, back in 2013, the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art received a discounted rental price from the property owner at little more than three yuan per square metre per day for six years to reward the centre’s distinguished contribution to the 798 art zone. This was half of that paid by many commercial galleries in 798.9 Today, an artist’s studio in Huantie Art City, located not far from 798 in Beijing, and often enjoying a lower price than other art related spaces, rents for around two-and-a-half yuan per square metre per day. In 50 Moganshan Road, popularly known as M50 Art District, Shanghai, the price is said to be surging and exceeds four Yuan for a commercial gallery, so gallerists and artists are moving out quickly. Comparatively, in the newly built cluster of art spaces at the rear of the West Bund Art & Design venue, Qiao Zhibing, founder of

Vol. 17 No. 1 35 Entrance to M50 Art District, Shanghai.

ShanghART Gallery, West Bund, Shanghai.

the Qiao Space, feels relatively satisfied about the one-and-a-half yuan rental rate. Clearly, this rate is not market-driven and shows government interference, but in a positive, supportive way. Established artists like Ding Yi and Zhou Tiehai, along with insightful gallerists like Lorenz Helbling of ShanghART, although not worrying about rental rates very much, sensed the support and consequentially moved their spaces from M50 to the West Bund. This permanently changed the map and centre of attention in Shanghai’s art world.

An often-overlooked detail in an interview attracted my attention. In the interview it was suggested that Budi Tek was planning to build a new centre for contemporary art in Songzhuang, Beijing, back in 2008, but the new Yuz Museum eventually opened in 2014 in West Bund, Shanghai. What changed Budi Tek’s mind was not mentioned, but I was later told

36 Vol. 17 No. 1 by an insider that Budi Tek was serious about his plan for Songzhuang or somewhere else in Beijing, which was considered the absolute centre for contemporary Chinese art at the time. However, when he tried more than ten times to register to have this institution sanctioned by the government, the name of the museum failed to gain approval, because, according to the interviewee, who does not want to release his name, “First of all, naming after the founder celebrates private ownership and personal charisma, so obviously it does not appeal to the authorities in charge in Beijing. Second, it is not only about the name. The Ministry of Culture in Beijing have inherited the bureaucratic style of yamen (the administrative office) from the Qing dynasty. Their lack of service awareness drives people away.” The government’s role as a service provider versus an authority may offer a means of understanding the difference between West Bund and a few of its predecessors and contemporaries in both Shanghai and Beijing. The lesson learned by the West Bund Development Group is about the role that government plays in forming the cultural district and the amount of control imposed upon the district residences. The Xuhui District government in Shanghai obviously does not leave art professionals in competition with other more profitable businesses without providing a certain amount of support, as with 798. Nor does it decide what should be on display in the institutions, as happended with the governmental over-involvement in Songzhuang and Nanjing’s artists’ villages. Instead, content-wise, after selecting the right, or seemingly right, people, the Xuhui District government allows relative freedom.

Running a privately owned art museum is expensive, regardless of whether the institution receives government support and how much it receives. Most museums are founded by wealthy collectors, but many have proved to be unsustainable. Therefore, in the Private Art Museum Report (2015), the interviewer cites the commonly used metaphor “an empty box that burns money” to find out the museum founders’ experience and awareness of their financial and managerial risks.10 The lifespan of many private art museums that are now closed was determined merely by how much money the founder could continue infusing into the organization. Many forerunners have vanished without a trace, among them the Shanghe Museum of Art in Chengdu (1998–2001). Shanghe was adapted to high academic and professional standards since the very beginning, strictly following curatorial practices common in Europe and America. The structure of the museum was simple, but there was no marketing or event planning team that would bring money in. The budget came out of the founder’s pocket, and once the businessman filed for bankruptcy, the museum faced its end.11 Idealism is a much favoured term to characterize the establishment of these museums, which tend to operate as vanity projects, turning a personal endeavour into a gift to society, with the collector pursuing an intended immortality through his or her artistic creation. Thus, the idea of making the museum profitable has not been welcomed. A few museums, in order to avoid falling into Shanghe’s fate, started renting out their spaces for exhibitions and events after the first few years of high-quality self-supported exhibitions, as did the Today Museum of Art, Beijing. This unplanned compromise can lead to an overly commercial image of the museum and, to some extent, keeps good exhibitions away.12

Vol. 17 No. 1 37 Learning the cruel lessons from Top: Today Art Museum, Beijing. predecessors, the founders of Left top and bottom: Yuz recently opened museums do not Museum store and cafe, Shanghai. hesitate to at first discuss money and profitability. This does not mean, however, that these spaces are designed to be rented out. Instead, the founders, most of whom are businessmen at their core, keep the idea of sustainability in mind from the planning stages, and the state-owned Shanghai West Bund Development Group supports this idea by promoting high-end consumption and lifestyles with a variety of activities and facilities. In other words, the visitors’ activities in the West Bund area blend together art and daily routines. Moreover, studies show that “cultural goods attain their value through cumulative collective consumption, whereby people lower their search costs by consuming the same cultural good as everyone else.”13 Also, because “a particular place being ‘branded’ as an important social milieu may be linked to the more practical matter of where such activities can logistically occur,”14 people who think of themselves as living a quality life gather, find their community, and build their social bonds through consumption of the arts and cultural products. Therefore, the commercialization of art or art as a selling point for other products is naturally accepted; for example, the Long Museum produced 10,000 replicas of the record-breaking “chicken cup,” a humble but delicate piece of mid- Ming imperial porcelain. Although the main galleries of the Long Museum are reserved for grand exhibitions from the founder’s collection or from the international art scene, Gallery I, located in a separate building, is for rent. So far, a few art fairs, solo exhibitions, and events have taken place in Gallery I, and it reportedly has a good market. Speaking with an interviewer, Budi Tek said, “I hope my art museum is profitable—of course, it is not for

38 Vol. 17 No. 1 myself. What I want to see is that the institution can cover the costs of its operation and become self-supportive and sustainable. I am still exploring the potential for selling tickets, housing events, finding sponsorships, as well as running a cafeteria, cafe, and museum store.”15 Qiao Zhibing refers to his Tank Shanghai project as an “art centre” instead of an “art museum,” because “it is harder and more restrained to run an art museum.” He added, “an art centre is more flexible and has fewer social duties and concerns. An art museum sounds more academic-focused. What I am thinking about is how to fit into the West Bund cultural and artistic milieu. We have green space for performances or even a concert. We can put sculptures and installation art in it. The art centre can perform as a traditional white box for art exhibitions. It also makes sense to bring a good restaurant to the space. We can experiment with some new ideas that will be popularized in a cosmopolitan area, such as being environmentally friendly and focusing on a healthy lifestyle.”16

Open Architecture, rendering of TANK SHANGHAI. Courtesy of TANK SHANGHAI, Shanghai.

Art professionals in Shanghai frequently have come across the hybridity of art and business, which has resulted in, unlike the residents of Songzhuang, and even 798, actually welcoming such a win-win collaboration. If one visits Shanghai’s most luxurious shopping malls in the heart of the city, such as Réel, New World City, or K11, one is quite likely to see an art-related fair going on. Sometimes the exhibitions are serious, such as Monet: Master of Impressionism (2014) or Media Dalí: Major Exhibition of Surrealism Art (2015), both at K11. The founders of the West Bund museums are also practitioners who fuse art and business. For instance, before moving his focus to the West Bund area, Qiao Zhibing was famous for his Shanghai Night—a night club providing karaoke and featuring world-class artworks by artists such as Damien Hirst. He also owns Art Restaurant, whose specialty and business are self-explanatory by its name—a place providing food and housing the owner’s art collection.17 Surprisingly, it is not only gallerists and artists who enjoy the setting, but art professionals, art lovers, and club goers also enjoy this hybrid experience. The opening banquet of the first West Bund Art & Design was hosted at Shanghai Night, proving the club to be an inseparable part of Shanghai’s art scene.

Vol. 17 No. 1 39 Monet: Master of Impressionism, installation view, 2014, K11 Art Mall, Shanghai.

In “Private Art Museum That Burns Entrance to K11 Art Mall, Shanghai. Money: What to Be Put in the Empty Box,” Qian Mengni vividly visualizes a private museum with a draining swimming pool.18 The wave of museum building, especially private museums, is considered to be blind by Qian Mengni, “The top leader likes grandiose projects, and the super wealthy collectors pour money into building new art museums.” Bruce Altshuler, Director of the Museum Studies Department at New York University, commented in 2014 that, “Shanghai’s push is representative of the next stage of major museum development in China, with local governments putting all this money into contemporary-art facilities. The scale is consistent with everything else you see in China—huge. The overall capacity for presenting contemporary art is now immense, and the problem is in filling it. I mean, who has that much stuff to show?”19 Besides the shortage in exhibition content, another lack, in ironic contrast with the massive building construction, is people—the professionals. Li Xu, a curator and critic now based in Shanghai, adds, “The private museums founders [namely Budi Tek of Yuz Museum and Wang Wei of Long Museum] are willing to pour money into the hardware [building and artwork], not the software [professionals].”20 Freelance curator Li Zhenhua agrees that the curators are not given enough respect, and sometimes the chief operating officer—at most times the founders themselves—does the curatorial work.21

With the tremendous record of art acquisitions by Liu Yiqian, Wang Wei, Budi Tek, and Qiao Zhibing, one should not worry too much about there being no permanent collection to fill the empty spaces in West Bund, but it is the absence of a professional curatorial team or a senior curator or academic consultant with museum studies or an art history background that has long been criticized. It demonstrates the lack of expertise in these newly founded museums, corresponding to Li Zhenhua’s aforementioned complaint and Li Xu’s comment that they are “strong in hardware and weak in software.” In July 2016, an article questioning the disrespect for curators was widely circulated among art professionals in Chinese

40 Vol. 17 No. 1 Xu Bing, Tobacco Project— social media like WeChat. I brought up this question to a few museum Tobacco Intervention, 2004, 660 thousand cigarettes, founders, studio owners for both art and design, and museum staff in installation view in Myth/ History: Yuz Collection of the West Bund. Surprisingly, they contested the criticism because, firstly, Contemporary Art, Yuz Museum, Shanghai. Photo: for major exhibitions in the Long and Yuz museums, guest curators with JJYPHOTO. Courtesy of Yuz Museum, Shanghai. strong academic backgrounds have been invited to organize them, as well as to provide academic and conceptual interpretations. For example, Budi Tek has collaborated with Wu Hung, an art history professor at the University of Chicago, for a few of his most important exhibitions such as the first exhibition Myth/History (2014) and Twin Tracks: Yang Fudong Solo Exhibition (2015). Publications and conference discussions were taken care of in a professional way in the two exhibitions curated by Wu Hung. Additionally, Wang Wei invited the world-renowned curator Hans Ulrich Obrist to create a show, who decided to have an artist to curate a show from the permanent collection. Obrist concluded that the curatorial process and, ultimately, the show, became the work of the artist. The result was 1199 (2014), curated by Xu Zhen, founder of MadeIn Company, which in 2016 moved to West Bund from its former location at M50. This approach of inviting a guest curator instead of establishing a permanent curatorial position in the museum is understandable in the current context of China; one of the reasons lies in the fact that there are not enough professionally trained curators in China. Although a few art institutes, such as the Central Academy of Fine Art, China Art Academy, Sichuan Art Academy, and Guangzhou Art Academy recently added a curatorial program to the curriculum, the graduates are not yet established in the field, and the limited opportunities prevent them from advancing their professional skills.

On the one hand, this gesture results in a founders’ vanity that looms too large. For the Olafur Eliasson exhibition Nothingness is not nothing at all (March 20 to June 26, 2016), Wang Wei’s role was that of co-founder and chief curator of Long Museum. No “curator” or “curated by” was

Vol. 17 No. 1 41 listed in a media release or on the exhibition webpage. Wang Wei gave her interpretation of Eliasson and his work during the opening, in the media release, and on the webpage of the museum, followed by Eliasson’s brief self-introduction and artist statement. Eliasson’s artistic achievement makes it seemingly unnecessary for local critics in China to further exploit any underlying significance embedded within the works other than translating some existing, canonic texts. Thus, neither a curator nor critic was included in the curatorial team, and Wang Wei, who invited the artist and paid for the production, and whose space housed the exhibition, partially assumed the role of a traditional curator. In a more recent exhibition, SHE: International Women Artists Exhibition (July 22 to October 30, 2016), Wang Wei is the self-proclaimed curator.22 She wrote the curatorial statement, which was used for the media release and webpage information; presumably she also selected the works from her own collection and decided on the placement of the works in the exhibition hall. The exhibition consisted of artworks from thirteen countries spanning over ten centuries by one-hundred-and-five artists, which fell into four parts: “Self-annihilation,” “Self-liberation,” “Self- introspection,” and “Self-expression.” Basically, the four parts were installed in a chronological convention and presumably followed a linear progression of women’s roles leading to better social and artistic recognition.

Obviously, compared with SHE: International Women Artists Exhibition, 2016, Eliasson’s survey exhibition, installation view with Mona Hatoum's Suspended, 2011, SHE: International Women Long Museum, Shanghai. Artists Exhibition, curated by the Photo: Andrew Stooke. co-founder of the Long Museum, is more problematic if it is meant to be “complete.” By “complete” I am not referring only to a full set of exhibition components including the press release, curatorial statement, publications, and a conference. Instead, because this show is an assembly of artworks from a wide range of historical periods, and under a generic but thematic title, professional viewers might expect an in-depth and thorough discourse rendered in texts covering history, art history, gender studies, or other disciplines. These parts are missing, or, perhaps, dismissed. However, this exhibition is safely presented because Wang Wei is aware of the absolute advantages of the Long Museum as an art museum located in West Bund and in Shanghai, as well as the supreme quantity and quality of the collection. The strategy to let the artwork speak for itself is simple and effective to some extent, and if this is the rationale for the exhibition, then the very linear and evolutionary curatorial statement exists for no reason. This imposes a question on the founder, as well as the founder’s will and vanity in relation to a privately owned art museum and its future. The following case, though different, also touches on this issue.

42 Vol. 17 No. 1 Olafur Eliasson, Nothingness There is an unspoken competition is not nothing at all, 2016, installation view at Long between the Long and Yuz museums Museum, Shanghai. and the collectors that is not helping them to establish their own brand in West Bund and in Shanghai, especially for Budi Tek and his Yuz Museum because the budget is less of an issue for the Long Museum and the collectors behind it. For instance, Olafur Eliasson: Nothingness is not nothing at all opened on March 19, 2016, attracting everyone’s attention within and outside the art world. Due to the strong visual presence of the work, it served as a good photographic backdrop for its visitors, so it naturally it received popularity across social media. On March 22, 2016, Alberto Giacometti’s Retrospective had its opening reception at the Yuz Museum, branded as “the world’s largest Giacometti’s retrospective” in all media imaginable.23 The wall label for the Giacometti exhibition reads, “It is not only the first Giacometti exhibition in China, but also the world’s largest retrospective to date, after Paris at Centre Pompidou (2007).”24 And the text for the Eliasson exhibition starts with, “The Long Museum, Shanghai, is pleased to announce the first survey exhibition of the work of world-renowned Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson in a Chinese museum.”25 A quick read through the introductions posted on the museum websites, which were also used for media circulation, shows the ambition of both museums to be the “first,” the “biggest [in number],” and the “most [of different qualities].”

Alberto Giacometti’s What is the cause of this competition? Again, as with Wang Wei, who Retrospective, 2016, installation view at Yuz appointed herself the curator of the SHE exhibition, the founder of the Museum. Courtesy of Yuz Museum, Shanghai. Yuz Museum assumes multiple leadership roles and enjoys the vanity of it. Of course, there is nothing wrong with the founder’s high standards and willingness to provide world-class exhibitions that maximize the museum’s artistic, educational, and intellectual potential. However,

Vol. 17 No. 1 43 deciding which exhibition to host for the sake of competition, or in consideration of rivalry with a neighbour, could affect a museum’s own sustainability and specialization. At the Yuz Museum, although a manager was appointed to lead the curatorial team, I was told by museum staff and other art professionals, “Mr. Budi Tek is the sole decision maker.” The founder not only fully controls the acquisition of artworks, but also extends his power to the exhibitions and public relations, even though the staff consists of experienced professionals from other art institutions and event planning companies. Again, I was told that this sometimes “frustrates the staff because all the efforts put into realizing a show or event can abruptly cease based on the founder’s preference or interest.” For sure, this air of uncertainty affects the initiation and self-motivation of the staff, which would eventually affect the museum’s sustainability in a negative way. Entering 2016, Budi Tek shifted his primary focus from his business in Indonesia to his museum in Shanghai, which resulted in an even more intimate relationship between the founder and the institution. But this attitude is, to an extent, rooted in his personal attachment to the collection. Collectors become attached to their collections as if they were their own children, watching them grow and develop over time. Collections simultaneously legitimize and reaffirm the reputation of the collector and his or her exclusive role in collecting art. Art historians, however, do benefit to a certain extent from museums being built around a private collection of art, as this exclusive collection-based museum experience offers some insight into the personal history of the collection.

It is the curator’s job to ensure the continuity of a collector’s original mission and assist the institution to fit into the changing and heightened demands and contemporary cultural trends affecting the museum field globally. A few founders have expressed their admiration for the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, which started as a privately owned art museum reflecting the founder’s own taste and vision, but later evolved beyond that. Nowadays, “Guggenheim” has become a brand that cities worldwide can embrace and thus use the Guggenheim’s name and collection. One of the most famous examples is the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, resulting in the phenomenal “Bilbao effect,” in which a branch of the Guggenheim, with its exquisite “starchitecture by Frank Gehry,” regenerated a whole city. Maybe the Long Museum’s recent opening of its third location in Chongqing follows this logic. The presence of a museum professional will often ease the transition between collecting for personal pleasure and operating a public museum. As museum standards impact collectors more directly, we likely will see more collectors seeking the advice of professionals in the field, resulting in collections that are better prepared to long outlast their founders or curators.

Artist Zhou Tiehai, appointed director to the West Bund Art & Design, dismissed the derisive reference to blind “museum fever.” He asked me whether the 1930s and 40s in the United States would be viewed meaningless since many private museums did not manage to survive to today.26 The answer is obviously “no.” The ongoing and upcoming projects and museum construction depict the West Bund Cultural Corridor, an arts district in formation, as an urban success story of Shanghai with improved

44 Vol. 17 No. 1 transportation and infrastructure, as well as photogenic and picturesque settings that are both contemporary and nostalgic. The “museum fever” has caught global attention for years. Every six months, people see new museums coming up and some older ones disappearing. Some founders learn from previous failures, while others repeat the wrong decisions. If the West Bund Development Group and the stakeholders together can make the institutions and facilities an evolving artistic, educational, and entertaining place for public enjoyment and consumption, there is hope that the West Bund Cultural Corridor will be a real gift to society.

Notes

1. Elizabeth Currid and Sarah Williams, “The Geography of Buzz: Art, Culture, and the Social Milieu in Los Angeles and New York,” Journal of Economic Geography 10 (2010), 430. 2. Barbara Pollack, “Shanghai’s Tricky Museum Transformation,” Art News, http://www.artnews. com/2014/03/17/shanghais-tricky-museum-transformation/. 3. Anonymous, “Starving Artists from Songzhuang Artist Village (Beijing) Became Homeless and The Art Village in Nanjing Is Now a Ghost Town,” originally posted by China National Radio (2015), http:// society.people.com.cn/n/2015/1006/c1008-27666513.html/. 4. Anonymous, “An Interview with Hu Jiebao: Making a Town through Culture in Songzhuang,” sina.com (2016), http://ent.sina.com.cn/y/2006-09-18/11281252576.html/. 5. “Unescapable Rise and Fall: Original Art Gradually Disappears in Songzhuang,” originally posted by China Times (2014), http://art.china.cn/zixun/2014-10/10/content_7286135.htm/. 6. Anonymous, “Can 798 Overcome the Destined Collapse of the Art Zone?” Art Bank (April 2013), http://collection.sina.com.cn/yjjj/20130412/1444110333.shtml/. 7. Anonymous, “798: Beijing’s Cultural Name Card,” Economic Daily (2008), http://news.xinhuanet.com/ politics/2008-08/04/content_8939622.htm/. 8. Lara Farrar and Mitch Moxley, “The Rise of China’s Songzhuang Art Village,” CNN Travel (2010), http://travel.cnn.com/explorations/none/chinas-song-zhuang-art-village-744184/. 9. Zhang Guisen “New Era? 798 Art Zone in Post-Ullens Time,” artron.net (2016), http://news.artron. net/20160726/n853268.html/. 10. AMMA and Larry’s List, Private Art Museum Report (2015), http://amma.artron.net/reportDetail. php?id=26 11. Chen Guo, “Shanghe Museum of Art in Rashmon,” Art World 49 (2015), http://www.yishushijie.com/ magazines/content-4126.aspx/. Dai Zhuoqun, “The Reality and Difficulties of Privately-Owned Art Museums in China,” Artlinkart (2016), http://www.artlinkart.com/cn/article/overview/cafaxwpp/ about_by2/D/a86aAyqj/. 12. In 2016, I was trying to assist a curator to bring a show to China. After talking with a few art museums about renting their spaces, the curator decided to go for somewhere “less commercial,” and declined a relatively generous offer by Today Museum of Art. This made me rethink how an art museum might find a balance between reputation and sustainability. 13. Currid and Williams, “The Geography of Buzz,” 427. 14. Ibid., 425. 15. Qian Mengni, “An Interview with Budi Tek: It Makes Me Sad That No One Comes to Such a Good Show,” yicai.com (2014), http://m.yicai.com/news/3892324.html/. 16. Qiao Zhibing in discussion with the author, August 2016. 17. Barbara Pollack, “From Palace to Tank: Art Collector Qiao Zhibing is Parlaying His Shanghai Karaoke Club into a Museum-Cum-Recreation-Space,” Art News (2016), http://www.artnews.com/2016/09/07/ from-palace-to-tank-art-collector-qiao-zhibing-is-parlaying-his-shanghai-karaoke-club-into-a- museum-cum-recreation-space/. 18. Qian Mengni, “Private Art Museum That Burns Money: What to Be Put in the Empty Box,” originally posted by China Business News (2014), http://art.people.com.cn/n/2014/0606/c206244-25111645.html/. 19. Pollack, “Shanghai’s Tricky Museum Transformation.” 20. Qian, “Private Art Museum That Burns Money: What to Be Put in the Empty Box.” 21. Wang Huangsheng, “An Interview with Wang Huangsheng: The Biggest Problem of Curatorial Projects in China is the Absence of Standards,” http://www.cces2006.org/index.php/Home/Index/ detail/id/6285/. 22. “SHE: International Women Artists Exhibition,” Long Museum, http://thelongmuseum.org/en/ exhibition/overview/7caeoA/. 23. “Giacometti Retrospective,” Yuz Museum Shanghai, http://www.yuzmshanghai.org/giacometti- retrospective/. 24. Ibid. 25. “Olafur Eliasson: Nothingness is Not Nothing at All,” Long Museum, http://thelongmuseum.org/en/ exhibition/overview/d81dwA/. 26. Zhou Tiehai, in discussion with the author, June 2014.

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