The Inner Trappings of a Dragon: Long Museum, Shanghai
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Julie Chun The Inner Trappings of a Dragon: Long Museum, Shanghai he culture of museum-building in China has reached Long Museum Pudong, exterior view. Photo: Ruth unprecedented heights in the last decade. In the period of eleven Thompson. years from 2000 to 2011, the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics T 1 indicated that 1,198 museums were established in China. Compare that with the short span from 2011 to 2012, when 829 museums erupted onto the landscape.2 What is unusual about this exponential building phenomenon is that many museums in China are constructed before the formation of, and oftentimes even without, permanent collections. This may seem like putting the cart before the horse; yet, in an immense country filled with a large pool of established and emerging artists, the belief is that the cart will not only fill, but also overflow. The establishment of the Long Museum (), meaning dragon, is the embodiment of such confidence.3 As one of the few private museums in Shanghai founded by a mainland collector, the Long Museum aims to put on the global map not one but two world-class institutions on either side of the Huangpu River. The Birth of a Dragon On December 18, 2012, the first Long Museum opened in the upscale area of Pudong, not far from the financial hub of Lujiazui. The inauguration was 20 Vol. 13 No. 5 Left: Long Museum Pudong, with Zhang Wang, Jiashanshi # 108, 2006, stainless steel, 200 x 140 x 64 cm. Photo: Ruth Thompson. Right: Long Museum Pudong, reception area. Photo: Ruth Thompson. pivotal because it marked the launching of the first private art museum in Shanghai with a permanent collection of art —ranging from antiquities, revolutionary, modern, and contemporary—that could be rotated. Serenely sheathed in white granite, the pristine rectangular complex was designed by the artist and architect Zhong Song. The sleek modernist exterior aptly references a minimalist-style reliquary for enshrining Chinese art accumulated since the early 1990s by billionaire “super collectors” Liu Yiqian and his wife, Wang Wei.4 Liu Yiqian’s biography, which included dropping out of school at the age of fourteen to work in his family’s handbag business, then driving cabs, and eventually investing his way into becoming one of the wealthiest tycoons in China, exemplifies the ultimate rags-to-riches dream.5 With Wang Wei, who serves as the co-founder and director of the museum, Liu Yiqian has gone to great lengths to acquire and repatriate historic and iconic works of Chinese art back to the country’s native soil. One has to admire the tenacious nationalism that lies at the heart of this monumental feat, because a love of art alone might not have been able to resolve all the challenges the couple has had to face.6 A recent controversy centred on the allegation that the Gong Fu Tie work of calligraphy by the Song dynasty poet Su Shi (1037–1101), which Liu Yiqian purchased in September 2013 for $8.2 million USD, is a “fake.”7 Liu Yiqian can afford to stand staunchly resolute, given that he possesses the means and the wealth to hire the best litigators and art experts and has the solid backing of Sotheby’s (where many of Liu Yiqian’s auction purchases were made) to defend his position. Indeed, two months after the allegation, the case came to a close after the authenticity of the calligraphy was confirmed by technical testing, appraisal by three authoritative experts, and published research by Sotheby’s.8 Establishing the Canon With their vast wealth of artifacts, Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei have claimed the rare collecting status that was historically reserved for imperial rulers of China. The provenance of many renowned classical works of art in museums around the world can be traced to royal or imperial collections. The core collection at the Louvre Museum in Paris belonged to King Louis XIV, and the nucleus of the masterpieces at the Museo del Prado in Madrid were commissioned on the orders of King Charles the V. Similarly, in China, the antiquities as well as other patronized art amassed by the Song dynasty Emperor Huizong (r. 1100–1126) grew and evolved to become the crux of the collection at the Palace Museum in Beijing. Vol. 13 No. 5 21 The tradition of accumulating culture in China was thus perceived as reflecting the collector’s moral virtue. According to art historian Craig Clunas, “Possessions of ancient things stood for an equivalence with the wise rulers of ancient times.”9 The meritorious emperor, having received the mandate of heaven, took on the responsibility of being the arbiter of literary and artistic taste. Dictating discernment and stylistic judgment that was passed on from the royal house to those of the aristocrats, the imperial art collection came to establish the canon for later centuries, to which successive rulers and collectors hoped to aspire. The founders of the Long Museum have been accruing notable cultural signifiers for over twenty years, making many of their acquisitions at international art auctions. They have also negotiated private purchases of contemporary art from renowned European collectors of Chinese art, such as the former Swiss diplomat Uli Sigg and the Belgian art patrons Guy and Miriam Ullens.10 The treasure trove at the Long Museum in Pudong functions as a carefully controlled artistic archive showcasing not only the state-authorized but also the market-endorsed version of an abridged Chinese art history that can be viewed in under two hours. The third floor offers an eminent, albeit eclectic, collection of antiquities ranging from ink paintings, fine porcelains, and even an imposing eighteenth century imperial throne from the Qing dynasty. The second floor is dedicated to one of the largest private collections of revolutionary art, the visual vehicle for party propaganda that became a potent force after Mao Zedong’s talk at Yan’an in May 1942 and was dominant during the Cultural Revolution (1966–76).11 With a particular resonance by association, the Long Museum in Pudong effectively sustains the legacy of showcasing a meticulously selected version of elite and sovereign Chinese art history. Long Museum West Bund, entrance. Photo: Ruth Thompson. The Dragon Re-emerges As another site for production of meaning, the newly opened Long Museum West Bund attempts to set the institutional framework for a defining a new canon of twentieth and twenty-first century Chinese art. Competing tightly with the Yuz Museum, another ambitious private museum in the vicinity that has since been inaugurated, the Long Museum West Bund opened on March 28, 2014, in Shanghai’s riverside district of Xuhui, a site currently 22 Vol. 13 No. 5 devoted to major re-gentrification as the emerging West Bund Cultural Corridor.12 Almost three times larger than the Pudong branch, the West Bund museum boasts a total area of 33,000 square metres, with about 16,000 square metres dedicated for exhibition space. If the first branch embodies the cube, the second museum takes the form of a basilica. Designed by the Chinese architect Liu Yichun, the immense barrel-vaulted ceiling is constructed the same hue and materiality of the grey concrete to reflect the industrial aesthetics of the museum’s outer environs, which had formerly functioned as an air field. The visual link between the interior space and the exterior landscape appears as fluid as the water flowing in the harbour. Long Museum West Bund, first floor gallery view. Photo: Ruth Thompson. Long Museum West Within, the first floor of the Bund, first floor gallery with Xu Bing, Square museum constitutes radiating Word Calligraphy, 1999, fabric banner. Photo: Ruth galleries that open out onto Thompson. an expansive foyer where the crimson banner of Xu Bing’s 1999 Square Word Calligraphy swells from floor to ceiling, proclaiming, “Art for the People.” In this vast space, Xu Bing’s work is joined by that of a legion of Chinese artists who played a leading role in developing the lexicon of contemporary art since the 1980s. A large panel in oil Wang Guangyi’s Passport Series (1996) is displayed side-by-side with Zhang Peili’s melodically rendered early painting Silent Jazz (1995), which appears frozen in lyrical time. Representing the genre of “scar art,” Luo Zhongli’s vividly rendered naturalistic portrayal of a peasant woman in Spring Silkworms (1980) shares a wall with Zhang Xiaogang’s iconic haunting portrait of the Blood Line-Big Family series (1998). A few steps beyond, Yue Minjun’s forcefully smiling faces On the Lake (1994) open the vista for the disquieting grinning faces of the Mask Series (1996) by Zeng Fanzhi. On the second floor, constructed like a spacious loft, the gallery features works by the artists of the New Painting—a term advanced by art historian (and one of many advisors to the Long Museums) Lu Peng to describe the generation of artists born after 1970 whose market-driven successes have granted them greater artistic liberties over the censors.13 Worth Vol. 13 No. 5 23 Long Museum West Bund, first floor gallery view. Photo: Ruth Thompson. Xiang Jing, The End, 2000, painted fiberglass, 165 x 65 x 55 cm each piece. Photo: Ruth Thompson. 24 Vol. 13 No. 5 noting is the abundance of sculptural works by Xiang Jing that together with pieces by Qu Guangci and Gao Weigang constitute what seems to be a sculpture gallery. At present, there is an absence of photography and video art, excepting the single-channel loop of Estranged Paradise (1997–2002) by Yang Fudong on the main floor and the animated projection of Qiu Anxiong’s The Classic of Mountains and Seas (2006) in the foyer of basement.