No Shortage of Suitors for Shanghai Art Museums as Western Counterparts Seek Exposure in China – France’s Pompidou Centre Is the Latest

Why Shanghai? One need look no further than the West Bund to find the answer.

On the banks of the Huangpu River, the West Bund art complex is already home to a number of art institutions and galleries, including the Long Museum and Yuz Museum, and the West Bund Art Museum, which will be filled with works from the Pompidou collections for at least the next five years. Formerly an area of factories and warehouses, it boasts the biggest asset when it comes to exhibiting art – space.

Approximately 25,000 square metres in area, the West Bund Art Museum, designed by British architect David Chipperfield, has vast galleries with high ceilings.

As part of its collaboration with the Pompidou Centre, the Parisian arts centre will house exhibitions and projects by Chinese artists. Serge Lesvignes, president of the Pompidou Centre, says it “has always been committed to showcasing the vitality of the Chinese art scene. This collaboration in Shanghai will further strengthen our ties and certainly foster new dialogues between the artists and cultural institutions of both countries.”

In Shanghai the first fruit of its collaboration with the West Bund Art Museum is two exhibitions, “The Shape of Time” and “Observations”.

“The Shape of Time” presents an abridged history of Western modern art. From Picasso to Duchamp, Chagall to Calder, works by all significant modernists are on view. “Observations” features 15 of the more than 3,000 new-media works in the Pompidou collection, including works by Bruce Nauman, Tony Oursler, and Ryoji Ikeda.

Meanwhile Yuz Museum’s Tek and Michael Govan, chief executive of LACMA, this year established a non-profit foundation, based in Hong Kong, to ensure that most the Tek collection, particularly contemporary Chinese art, remains available as a public resource for exhibitions and scholarship. To coincide with the announcement of the foundation’s creation, a LACMA exhibition, “In Production: Art and the Studio System”, opened at Yuz Museum to foster cross-cultural exchange.

On view are works by established artists such as Alex Prager, Mike Kelley, and Alex Israel from the Los Angeles museum’s permanent collection.

Govan said: “In the last decade, LACMA has placed tremendous emphasis on growing its Chinese art exhibitions, acquisitions, publications, and educational programming, and we look forward to continuing to engage people with Chinese art and culture on an international scale.”

And Zoe Kahr, deputy director for curatorial and planning at LACMA, says: “We have started and will continue to work with the Yuz team in a very collaborative way to conceive projects that will introduce audiences to new material but are also reflective of the local situation.”

With the proliferation of art spaces opening in Shanghai, the challenge for curators will lie in making sure exhibitions continue to be high-quality and relevant to local audiences.