New museum = New controversies

After a decade of waiting since its announcement, the ‘M+’ museum in the West Kowloon Cultural District is finally set to be opened later this year. This will mark the first museum dedicated to contemporary visual culture in Asia; collecting, exhibiting, and interpreting art, design, architecture, and moving images all under one roof. It will feature 33 galleries, 3 cinemas, a lecture theatre, cafes, a museum shop, a public roof terrace, and much more with a total footprint of 65,000 square meters. So, it’s pretty big.

As exciting as this news is, the museum has been under fire the past few weeks from the political realm with concerns over the museum’s collection and curatorial duties in accordance with the ‘newly’ established National Security Law.

The controversy stemmed from weeks ago when pro-Beijing legislator Eunice Yung Hoi-yan questioned if the museum’s collection - which includes a work by Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei where he holds up his middle finger towards Tiananmen* - would violate the law and be a catalyst for unpatriotic behaviour. Initially, M+ director Suhanya Raffel assured that the museum would have “no problem” exhibiting dissident artists and their works such as Ai Wei Wei’s. However, the museum has now since revised the decision. Henry Tang Ying-yen, the chairman of West Kowloon Cultural District Authority,- which M+ is under, has expressed support for the decision to not exhibit “vulgar” works by Ai during its opening. Choosing to not exhibit during the opening is not analogous to not exhibiting the work ever, which Tang stresses by saying “we never planned to make it one of the exhibits during the opening” and “we have more than 8000 works in our collection”. He also asserts that he does not have the ability to judge whether certain works breach the national security law as the entire M+ is/will be accessible online for the public.

It is not only politically subversive works such as Ai’s Study of Perspective that has been targeted. SCMP reports that works that contain nudity, portrays homosexuality, or are associated with liberal Western values have also come under attack by those who show contempt towards politically sensitive work. Many of these sensitive works come from Swiss businessman Uli Sigg, who partially donated his collected 1510 works of contemporary Chinese art from 1970-2010 and sold the rest to M+. It was initially supposed to be sold to Shanghai though Sigg finalised on Hong Kong due to its relatively freer degree of artistic expression and information. While many political and cultural figures have expressed their disdain towards the Sigg collection and M+’s wider collection of works, many are also in support of it. Guangzhou-born art curator and critic Hou Hanru states that it is “an invaluable contribution” to M+.

Although this might seem like high school drama within the small clique of Hong Kong’s cultural industry, this controversy speaks a lot more about Hong Kong’s contemporary society and future. This doesn’t merely concern the art itself. It sets precedent for Hong Kong Authorities’ view on public education, censorship, production of creative projects, and cultural discourse.

At what point does the display of artworks with ‘Western’ socio-political values become a force of unwanted neo-imperialism? At what point does the display of - or lack of - artworks with values associated with Mainland Chinese authorities become an encroachment of freedom of expression? How can the museum encourage critical thinking for all parties concerned without jeopardising its reputation internationally and/or within China? Does not agreeing with a particular ideology warrant artworks to be taken down or put up? There are too many questions to which the answers can only be inferred over the long term as M+ develops and adapts to Hong Kong’s ever-growing socio-political pressures.

With the museum’s aim to not only represent the contemporary visual culture of Asia but to also rival museum superpowers such as Tate Modern in London or MoMA (The Museum of Modern Art) in New York City, this political-cultural tension may have already hindered its ambitious international credibility. Though again, of course, this does not warrant a thoughtless scornful dismissal of the entire organisation as there is still a long way to go until the opening and even longer before the museum ‘matures’.

It is now up to the M+ curators and management to decide how to walk the fine line between the demands of Chinese/Hong Kong authorities and the common liberal identity that most museums uphold. Ultimately, deciding whether the future of one of Hong Kong’s and Asia’s proudest cultural institution would be a success born out of tension or a disaster born out of the mismanagement of socio-politics (this statement is not respective or implicit to any ‘camps’ of the political ideologies in the previous sentence; it is of generally-speaking).

And the public? I guess we can hope and/or start placing current affairs at the forefront.

*Ai’s controversial work is part of a collection of photographs called Study of Perspective where he holds up the middle finger at various cultural, historical, or geographic landmarks all over the world.

Further Readings

A recent and more detailed overview of M+’s political situation right now: https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3128474/political-storm-raises-stakes-hong-kong-museum-m-and-its

Ai Wei Wei’s response to M+ controversy: https://hongkongfp.com/2021/04/03/ai-weiwei-mourns-hong-kong-freedoms-but-proud-of-tiananmen-middle-finger-photo-row/

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