Private Museums in China: A Critical Discussion of the Current Industry Boom

Private museums in China: A critical discussion of the current industry boom
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Private museums in China: A critical discussion of the current industry boom
1.0 Introduction
In the art market, the role played by museums in significant. China is putting up modern art museums at an unparalleled pace. Individuals and private firms gradually more have not only the means of establishing these contemporary museums, but they also have the know-how to keep the museums going, usually to a higher standard compared with the country’s public or government-owned museums (Denton, 2015). Private museums in China have been flourishing since the 1990s in all parts of China, particularly in economically-developed regions like Guangdong, Shanghai, and Beijing. Unlike state-owned museums, private museums in general enjoy more freedom. This research paper provides a critical and detailed discussion regarding the boom of privately-owned art museums in China today.
2.0 Purpose of study and research question
At the present time, China is in the period of rapid economic development while the boom of the privately funded museums is up surging. Private museums have been springing up in the mainland of China in recent years, and their numbers continue to increase. Although it is difficult to provide the exact figures due to the inconsistency of statistical standards across provinces and the lack of credibility of government statistics, Liang, Hack and Lanchun (2015) reported that by the year 2014, there had been nearly 1,000 non-state-funded art museums established in China and over 170 of them were founded within the last year; that is 2013. The explosive rise of non-state-funded ventures in China has been widely criticized and questioned whether it is false prosperity. A report for the Cable News Network (CNN) questioned whether the private art museums in China are empty vanity projects or icons, and pointed out that this trend will leave nothing more than exceptionally dazzling architectural structures (McCafferty, 2016). Another article by Dezeen Magazine (2015) claimed that even with massive amounts of private funding floating into the private museums, China could never buy culture. This leads to the research question that inspires and guides this study:
Are private museums in China, whether emerging or established, in sustainable development?
With the aim to provide a reasonable response to the criticisms pointing to the China’s private sector participation in cultural activities, this study takes the form of a critical review of relevant literatures including newspaper reports and articles, explores current issues and problems of the management of private museums in China – especially challenges brought about by the boom of the industry. The paper also investigates possible solutions; that is, how to maintain a sustainable development through self-improvement, cultural policy reform and legal enforcement. By conducting this research, it is expected to form a critical understanding towards the current situation of private museums in China and identify the possibilities associated with management.
3.0 Content areas to be discussed in the research paper include the following:
Introduction to the history and development of private museums in China;
Comparison and contrast of the private museum operating models in China and traditional Western models;
Impacts of the China’s private museum boom on China as well as the global art industry;
Current issues and problems in practice; and
Possible solutions in terms of self-improvement, cultural policy reform and legal enforcement.
As suggested above, this study will be conducted through a combination of literature reviews and case studies. However, the small scale of research and limited resources could lead to a narrowed scope. In particular, the lack of credibility of statistical figures could affect the validity of arguments in this study.
4.0 Significance of research – why the research is important
This study will provide an objective position and a non-discriminative viewpoint towards the controversy over China’s museum boom, and it is hoped that this research paper would familiarise further researches towards this particular issue. This study is built on the previous learning of a series of arts management courses including Cultural Policy, Law, and Gallery and Museum Management. In particular, this study is inspired by a previous reading - “Home as Museum” by Honeywill (2011) - from the Gallery and Museum Management course which shows the possibility of converting individual houses to private museums and making personal belongings displays and exhibits in that museum. This study is based on the fact that private museums in China, which are mostly funded and operated by significant collectors and wealthy parties to show off self owned cultural properties, share quite a lot of similarities with the idea of making homes as museums. If making the houses of significant individuals as museums is viewed as a new possibility, it is a reasonable assumption to make that what is happening in China’s museum sector share the same possibility of becoming a new model for future museums.
5.0 Literature Review
5.1 Introduction to the history and development of private museums in China
Whether lone architectural wonders, like Shanghai’s Long Museum West Bund, or eye-catching collections of over twenty buildings such as the Nanjing Sifang Art Park, the construction of private art museums in China is booming. Every year, a lot of stunning novel museums are being constructed, their cost amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars (Griffin, 2002). This boom is driven by the municipal and government policy, the growing number of Chinese billionaire art investors who hope to leave a cultural legacy, as well as the security and fiscal deterrents that hamper donation of private art to public facilities (Liang, Hack & Lanchun, 2015).
In China over the past few years, the number of museums being put up by private individuals and by the government of China has exploded, from 2,600 in the year 2009 to about 4,160 in the year 2014, which is an increase of 60 percent in only 5 years (Liang, Hack & Lanchun, 2015). The growth in private museums in China has in fact been even faster, rising over 3 times over the same period to 865 in the year 2014 (Liang, Hack & Lanchun, 2015). In the past 60 to 70 years, there were very few art museums in China. In the year 1949 when the Communist Party assumed power, there were only 25 museums in the country, and a lot of these museums were ruined by the ten-year Cultural Revolution which started in the year 1966. The newly rich businesswomen and men in China are leading their own cultural charge. Tablang (2016) reported that in a culture which has remained suppressed for a very long period of time, the moment things begin to open up, some kind of burst of momentum and energy is likely to be seen. In China, this generation of well-off business persons comprising private collectors, particularly the big private collectors, has had a number of decades to make their fortunes and it is natural that these collectors are currently spending the money on art collections and artists (Wu, 2011).
In China, a major incentive that has contributed to the explosion of museums is government policy. The National People’s Congress, which is the country’s parliament, named the growth of museums as a goal in its 5-year plans since the year 2010. Both industry-based and private collectors of artwork are usually given favourable government real estate deals for their museums (Denton, 2015). It is notable that even though a number of private museum owners in China are motivated by vanity, a lot of them are actually driven by a desire to share their newly acquired culture with other people; that is, with the Chinese public (Wu, 2011). In China, there are 4 main motivations for art collectors to construct their own private museums. Firstly, they do so since there were no other privately-owned modern museums within their region. Secondly, they hope to put up a modern art ecosystem. Third reason is that the public display of their art collections will help them in achieving an individual sense of actualization. The other reason is essentially the pleasure and contentment of sharing modern art with the masses (Xiangguang, 2012). In essence, each privately-owned museum in China is faced with unique challenges and each one of them has dissimilar museum-donor relationships that have to be sustained.
5.2 Comparison and contrast of the private museum operating models in China and traditional Western models
To raise funds, private museums in China tend to rely very much on donors; corporate donors and individual donors, while western art museums do not rely heavily on donors since they also have other funding sources. Unlike in Europe and the United States, China does not have a philanthropic culture (Griffin, 2002). Art collectors therefore do not get fiscal incentives for instance tax deductions to donate their art collections to public museums and art galleries. In addition, a lot of collectors in China would instead put up their own art museums than donate their collections thanks to a perceived and real notion that public art museums lack the climate control technology or security essential in protecting the art (Xiangguang, 2012). Furthermore, the more that a private collector is able to show and control his/her own art collections, the more opportunity there is for that particular art collection to increase in value, and thus the collector is also controlling that market with his/her own collection. Another contributing factor is the greater curatorial freedom of private museums (Varutti, 2014).
On the contrary, private art museums in Europe and the United States operate using 3 different models. Firstly is the education model that is committed to education for not just artists, but for the broader members of the public as well. An example of a private museum that uses this model is the private museum in Italy known as Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation (Honeywill, 2011). The second model is entrepreneur model that depends on the sales of its collection; selling art at negotiable price tags as a fundraising technique. Moreover, to generate funds for their operations, traditional museum models in the west organize art fairs which help in fundraising. A Western museum that employs this model is London’s Saatchi Gallery. The third model is the regeneration model in which the museums rejuvenate decaying communities with museums and art. An example of a private museum that employs this model includes Rubell Family Collection’s projects in Washington D.C and Miami (Denton, 2015).
It is notable that while many museums in the West, especially the small ones, also rely on donors for financial support just as the Chinese private museums, the corporate organization or individual who is donating is really not making an investment. The backer gives funds to support operating expenses and the backer and the museum have no contract (Wu, 2011). This is different than in China where the private museum and donor enterprise have a relationship and contract with the investor and the museum seek to satisfy the personal interests of their investors (Wu, 2011).
5.3 Impacts of China’s private museum boom on China and the global art industry
The scale of private museum development in China is huge. Cultural consumption, thanks to the extensive construction of private museum facilities, has greatly impacted the economy of China. It has helped to diversify the economy of China from its dependence on exports and manufacturing toward domestic consumption, tourism, services, as well as higher-value creativity (Liang, Hack & Lanchun, 2015). Wu (2011) pointed out that the construction of more private art museum institutions across China ties in with the expansion of the middle class in this nation, who continue to become more and more interested in design and art. It also ties in with the cultural history of China, which the Communist Party of China tried to obliterate the evidence of in the ‘60s and ‘70s Cultural Revolution (Griffin, 2002).
The private museum boom in China has also spawned uniquely eye-catching architectural creations. The boom has provided many young architects in China lots of opportunities. Tablang (2016) noted that the gigantic projects have given architects in China and from other parts of the world the chance of experimenting with unique architectural designs. In addition, China’s private museum boom has provided an opportunity for international collectors to showcase their collections in private Chinese museums since some Chinese private museums have displays not just from China, but also from other parts of the globe (Xiangguang, 2012). This helps to advance the global art industry since the Chinese public are able to see international exhibits.
5.4 Current issues and problems in practice
5.4.1 Mediocre collections and few exhibits to fill the museum
A lot of Chinese private museums are largely empty shells that are overbuilt, and designed only to display artworks from the collections of a single owner, which may not be sufficient to fill a huge private museum facility (Dezeen Magazine, 2015). China’s rush to put up numerous new art museums, according to Chinese curators and architects as described in Dezeen Magazine (2015), is leading to museum facilities with mediocre collections and without vision. It is mainly not really about building an art museum in China with well-defined content that would draw members of the Chinese public and engage them; instead, it is more about making use of an art museum as a real estate development tool (Dezeen Magazine, 2015). Generally, many private museums in China have a shortage of museum-quality collections. These museums lack enough museum quality contemporary art to fill those museums, and thus many private museums have very few art exhibits. In addition, some private museum projects are simply vanity projects. For example, Shanghai’s Minsheng Art Museum is considered as simply a vanity project for a particular financial institution (Pollack, 2014).
Since the year 1978, more than 3,500 new museums have been constructed in China, and many of them are poor-quality structures, gigantic new facilities with no exhibits and displays, and some buildings are in fact situated in the middle of nowhere (Liang, Hack & Lanchun, 2015). Many museum facilities are essentially vanity projects of private investors. A lot of the structures are enormous, sculptural buildings taking significant amount of land in densely populated rural and urban areas. Eve...