The BBC picks up on the trend of museum building in China, especially as the anchor for commerical real estate development as this project seems to be:
“Asia has a very rich history and heritage so it is only natural that there should be a projection of this,” says Kwok Kian Chow, a senior adviser to Singapore’s National art Gallery.
Mr Kwok is also helping to set up an art museum that will be part of the 1.8bn yuan ($279m) Yellow River Arts Centre, a privately- funded facility that is scheduled to open in China’s north west in 2014.
Georgina Adam fills in some of the details in the Financial Times:
While mainland Chinese buying may be slowing, construction of new museums in the country continues at a frenetic pace. The latest project, which was unveiled last week in Hong Kong, is for a $279m art space in Yinchuan in north-west China, in the autonomous Ningxia Hui region. The Yellow River Arts Centre, housed in a futuristic-looking building designed by Foster and Partners with the WAA studio, will open in spring 2014. It is part of a larger, $4.76bn development driven by the Ningxia Minsheng Real Estate Company and partly publicly funded.
The museum will show an existing collection of Qing period paintings, alongside commissioned work by international contemporary artists. And commissioning has already started on a sculpture park, in collaboration with Britain’s Cass Sculpture Foundation, featuring Tony Cragg, Idris Khan and Bharti Kher among others. Yinchuan has a large Muslim population – over 25 per cent – and Liu Wenjin of Minsheng, who founded the project, said the arts centre “would become a window on China and on the Muslim world, to present itself as a diversified nation”.
