The Hong Kong art museum, M+, announced a gift it values at $163m from Swiss collector Uli Sigg:
The West Kowloon Cultural District Authority (WKCDA) announced today a donation of 1,463 artworks to the permanent collection of M+, Hong Kong’s future museum of visual culture opening in 2017. The collection donation, conservatively valued at HKD1.3 billion (USD 163 million) has been made by Dr Uli Sigg of Switzerland, the world’s leading collector of Chinese contemporary art.
The Sigg Collection is universally recognised as the largest, most comprehensive and most important collection in the world of Chinese contemporary art from the 1970s to the present. Consisting of works by approximately 350 artists – many of which are large-scale paintings or full room installations – it has been systematically built as a coherent museum-quality collection since the early 1990s, representing the historical development of contemporary art in China as a whole.
The collection comprises major works by leading artists, among them Ai Weiwei, Ding Yi, Fang Lijun, Geng Jianyi, Gu Wenda, Huang Yongping, Liu Wei, Wang Guangyi, Xu Bing, Yang Shaobin, Yue Minjun, Yu Youhan, Zeng Fanzhi, Zhang Peili, Zhang Xiaogang, as well as Hong Kong artists Lee Kit and Pak Sheung-Chuen, and many younger generation artists.
Dr Sigg has donated the majority of his Chinese contemporary art collection to M+. The donation has been conservatively valued at HKD1.3 billion by Sotheby’s. Under a part gift/ part purchase agreement, M+ acquired a further 47 works from Dr. Sigg’s collection for the sum of CHF 22 million (USD 22.7 million). Part gift/ part purchase is an increasingly common international model for museums to obtain a collection. The main aspect of this model is that the museum clearly shows its commitment to the collection.
