It’s been over a decade since the idea of a museum in Hong Kong’s
West Kowloon Cultural District was proposed. Raffel has occupied the institution’s director positions since 2016; Chong has been chief curator since 2013 (one year after Swiss collector Uli Sigg donated 1,463 works of Chinese contemporary art). In November their vast and much-delayed museum finally opened, with six shows, including historical surveys (Individuals, Networks, Expressions looks at postwar art from an Asian perspective; Hong Kong: Here and Beyond provides an overview of local production from the 1960s onwards) and a solo exhibition for Antony Gormley. It wasn’t all plain sailing: the museum has had to cope with the potential impact of the new National Security Law (removing the images of two works by Ai Weiwei from its website). Nevertheless, with the opening of the museum comes the opportunity to expand global art discourse in a way that offers greater visibility to Asian perspectives and allows the institution to present the cultural contexts of Asian art in greater depth.