Blanked canvas
In the middle of last year, I started getting calls from PR people wanting to pick my brain about art-related clients whose identities they weren't at liberty to reveal. 'Let's say I represent a major international museum,' they would say. 'And let's say they want to build a museum in West Kowloon. What could they do, hypothetically, to win this contract?'
Two major museum groups, New York's Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and Paris' Pompidou Centre, are doing everything they can - both in public and behind the scenes - to win a gloves-off, trans-Atlantic fight over who gets to build what would become first major western-run museum in Asia.
And why not fight over it? The proposed West Kowloon cultural hub is a pot of gold. It includes the unprecedented gift of an enormous new space - design, construction and upkeep mostly paid for by the selected real estate developer and the Hong Kong government - plus the chance to promote the museum's brand-name at the doorstep of the booming mainland market.
The charm offensive began last summer. The Guggenheim sent top curators and experts over for a lecture series, plus its top gun Thomas Krens, whose speech at the government-organised Asia Cultural Co-operation Forum sounded more like an ad for his company than a speech on urban culture. The Pompidou countered by sending over a Picasso curtain, which was unveiled the day French President Jacques Chirac held a party on the Two IFC rooftop.
The big surprise of the PR barrage came when Dynamic Star International, a joint venture between Cheung Kong Holdings and Sun Hung Kai Properties, invited a group of Hong Kong journalists on a five-nation, two-continent museum tour.
The surprise was not that a company would so blatantly spend so much money in return for press coverage to boost its bid. The surprise was that Dynamic Star was representing both museums, which inevitably led to infighting, and Pompidou chief curator Alain Sayag calling the Guggenheim a 'second-class' institution.
The politics, spin and money squabbles have overshadowed one question no one seems to be asking: Does the city need a giant, foreign museum in Kowloon?
'Hong Kong confuses real estate and culture,' says Henry Steiner, one of the city's best-known graphic designers. 'There are museums scattered all over the territory with hardly any visitors ... We have a big cultural centre and a major museum right next to the Star Ferry that's been forgotten. Why not spend the money to restore and promote what we already have?
'Look at what small galleries such as Para/Site are doing and all the other little people who are doing commendable work. That is real Hong Kong art, as opposed to bringing in the occasional Jackson Pollock or Andy Warhol. Why spend massive amounts of money on something imported?'
Although gallery owner Johnson Chang Tsong thinks Hong Kong does need more international art. he's wary about how the discussion about the museums has been held. 'All these issues - how is Hong Kong going to finance and organise West Kowloon? Is this just a big property development? - have to be separated from discussions on what role these museums will play artistically,' says Chang, who also consults on Asian art for the Guggenheim.
Chang says he would support either museum's bid, but with some caveats. 'An international museum is the best thing that can happen to Hong Kong artistically, but only if some rules are followed. Some people in the art world worry that, after a giant museum is built, local art will be swamped or sidelined. So some things must be agreed on beforehand, like parameters on the promotion of local and regional Asian art.'
As an example, he points to the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain, where 30 per cent of exhibitions are guaranteed to Spanish artists. 'A similar arrangement can be made here,' says Chang.
'There can be a mix. But if you ask a local artist if he wants to be shown at a small local gallery, or in a big museum next to a Warhol, you know what his answer will be.'
