Asia’s Private Museums (A Partial List)

With ArtHK12 opening today, it is worth focusing on some of the names behind Asia’s private museum movement. Collector Richard Chang sums it up nicely in the Financial Times when he says liquidity is key and “you have to be willing to allocate a great deal of it to your museum. You won’t get it back. Opening a museum is a good deed, an act of generosity, and comes with huge responsibility to the artists you are showing. You need the right mindset to make it meaningful: the danger is you become cheap on the good deed side if you’re worrying about the real estate.”

Here’s a list of the private museum builders included in the FT’s article:

Richard Chang, owner of the Domus Collection of contemporary art based in New York and Beijing, and board member of the Royal Academy, The Whitney Museum, MoMA PS1 and Tate

Budi Tek shows his collection at his Indonesian museum, the Yuz Foundation, and is set to open an 8,000 sq ft museum in Shanghai next year.

Nanjing Sifang Art Museum, a $2bn project owned by the Sifang Culture Group, launching in October in Jiangsu province.

Dai Zhikang, who opened the Zendai Art Museum in Shanghai in 2005, donating the space and funds for conceptual art within a Pudong shopping mall. Dai has since moved his museum to a new, grander development of shopping mall, theatre and hotel, and re-named it the Himalayas Art Museum

Thomas Ou’s Rockbund Museum, part of a property development on Shanghai’s riverfront, says: “We don’t hide the link but the branding of the area will not come inside the museum; there is interaction, not confusion.” The Rockbund is not based on a collection but collaborates with the world’s top museums and focuses on relationships between artists and curators.

Li Bing, owner of the Beijing He Jing Yuan Art Museum, says he began collecting 20 years ago. Li founded the Collectors’ Club in Beijing with the aim of “speeding up the learning process in China, where contemporary art developed late and people still don’t understand the international scene”