Planned HK museum to display China’s imperial relics

BEIJING — In a sign of growing cultural ties between mainland China and Hong Kong, officials in Hong Kong have announced plans to build a museum to serve as a permanent display space for objects from Beijing’s Palace Museum, home to some of China’s most treasured imperial artefacts.

Under the agreement, which was signed in Beijing on Friday by Ms Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s second-ranking official, and Dr Shan Jixiang, director of the Palace Museum, what is being called the Hong Kong Palace Museum will be built as part of the West Kowloon Cultural District, a colossal government-backed cultural infrastructure project.

The museum, costing US$451 million (S$654 million) and scheduled to be completed in 2022, will be managed by a subsidiary of the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority. Artefacts from the Palace Museum collection highlighting imperial life and culture in China will be exhibited on a long-term basis.

The Hong Kong architect Rocco Yim has been tapped to design the building, which will have an estimated 328,000sqf of floor space and feature two exhibition galleries, activity rooms, a 400-seat lecture theatre, a gift shop and a restaurant. Costs for the project are being fully covered by a donation from Hong Kong Jockey Club, a non-profit organisation that has supported several Palace Museum exhibitions in Hong Kong in the past.

Government officials are describing the project as part of larger celebrations planned for next year to mark the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong’s transfer in 1997 from British colonial rule to China.

“This is the best and greatest gift to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to the motherland,” Hong Kong’s leader Leung Chun-ying said at the signing ceremony.

For many in Hong Kong, the announcement Friday came as a surprise, prompting critics to raise concerns about the lack of transparency in the government’s decision-making process.

On Monday, Ms Lam dismissed the concerns, asserting that the preparation and approval of the new museum had been carried out “in accordance with procedures”.

“Since the plan for the entire West Kowloon Cultural District was designated for art and cultural facilities, it was not necessary to hold another public consultation on city planning just to build a new museum,” she said, according to remarks published on the Hong Kong government’s news website.

Ms Lam’s remarks appear to have done little to assuage her critics, many of whom have long been wary of efforts by Beijing to assert its influence in Hong Kong, a semi-autonomous territory.

However, more often than not, critics say Beijing’s influence in the city is felt indirectly. Last year, for example, officials at M+, Hong Kong’s planned museum of visual culture and another focal point of the West Kowloon Cultural District development, expressed concern that the museum’s government financing would make it vulnerable to unseen political pressures packaged as bureaucratic procedures.

With the new Hong Kong Palace Museum, however, there will be no denying Beijing’s presence. The original Palace Museum, which was founded in 1925 in the heart of China’s capital, along with the Great Wall, is one of China’s most prominent landmarks.

In 2014, more than 15 million people visited the Palace Museum, which is housed within the Forbidden City, though it probably is remembered more for its vermilion walls, white marble footbridges and yellow-glazed roof tiles than for its collection of artefacts, which are typically displayed in the wings of the sprawling complex.

The Palace Museum’s collection comprises vast holdings of more than 1.8 million artefacts built on the imperial collections of the Ming and Qing dynasties, and later expanded during the 20th century. In the 1940s, however, a number of the most prized objects were carried off by Chiang Kai-shek’s retreating Nationalist forces to Taiwan, where they are now displayed in Taiwan’s own National Palace Museum.

Still, the Beijing Palace Museum’s collection is by all accounts impressive, and it includes important works of bronzeware, jade, sculptures, seals, ceramics, calligraphy and paintings such as the famous 12th-century scroll Along the River During the Qingming Festival, which drew large crowds in 2007 when it made a rare appearance at the Hong Kong Museum of Art.

Given the success of previous exhibits, many in China and Hong Kong have applauded the decision to build a Hong Kong outpost as an opportunity to showcase more of the Palace Museum’s holdings before a wider audience. Because of limited space, Beijing’s Palace Museum displays only 0.5 per cent of its collection in any given year, Dr Shan, the museum’s director, said at a tourism conference in October.

At that conference, Dr Shan also announced plans to build a new 1.3 million sqf branch of the Palace Museum in northern Beijing, so that more cultural relics could be displayed to the public. THE NEW YORK TIMES