The M+ museum in Hong Kong.
Photographer: Billy H.C. Kwok/BloombergCulture
Hong Kong's New Museum Tries to Please Art World — and Beijing
The art world — and Beijing — are paying careful attention to what M+ puts on display.
Hong Kong's M+ museum, the city's long-awaited answer to the Pompidou and the Guggenheim Bilbao, opens this weekend, diving headlong into a debate over the future of art, culture and free expression in the rapidly changing city.
For the first piece in the exhibition, called “Hong Kong: Here and Beyond,” curator Tina Pang chose an untitled work by a celebrated local street artist, Tsang Tsou-choi, also known as the King of Kowloon. The text of the 2003 piece decries British colonial rule, a position that could be seen as pro-China. It’s also an elevation of graffiti, by a creator who later became quite critical of Beijing.