The West Kowloon Cultural District (WKCD) – the thriving arts district at the southern tip of Hong Kong's Kowloon Peninsula on the waterfront of Victoria Harbour – is making its mark on the world's cultural stage. This week WKCD is hosting a major summit bringing together more than 20 directors and curators from 12 countries along with 1,000 delegates (Connecting cultures/bridging timesMarch 24-25).
At the summit, the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority, the body behind the Hong Kong Arts Centre, signed several memorandums of understanding with more than 20 cultural institutions around the world in a bid to strengthen relations with other cultural institutions and centres. The memorandums cover collection sharing, conservation partnerships, scientific research, as well as education and exchange programmes.
The M+ Museum of Contemporary Visual Culture, a core institution of WKCD, has signed agreements with seven international museums including the Tate in the UK and the Center Pompidou in France. Meanwhile, the Hong Kong Palace Museum, which runs a rotating program showcasing more than 900 artifacts from the Palace Museum in Beijing, has collaborated with the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, among other places.
“The memorandum is a statement of intent about cooperation and exchanges at the exhibition [with the Hong Kong Palace Museum]says Tim Reeve, Deputy Director of the V&A Art newspaper. “We are in close contact with the team there; the focus is on the exhibitions.”
At the opening of the summit, John KC Lee, Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, said: “Under the auspices of the unique principle of 'one country, two systems', Hong Kong is the only city in the world with the two unique principles.” China advantage and global advantage. His comments highlight the unique balance the city has struck in the wake of a controversial new security law (Article 23) implemented on March 23.
Reeve outlined the challenges and benefits of developing East Bank, a new arts and education center located in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in east London, during a summit session titled “The Contributions of Cultural Districts to the Social and Economic Transformation of Cities.” The session also included speakers from Qatar (Sheikha Al-Nasr, Director of the Museum of Islamic Art) and Australia (Katrina Sedgwick, Director of the Melbourne Arts Foundation).
Director of the Qatar Museum of Islamic Art, Sheikha Al-Nasr, gave a lecture on how cultural districts can bring about social and economic change within cities.
Courtesy of the Museum of Islamic Art
Reeve also chairs Eastbank, the organization behind the UK's “newest cultural quarter” where the V&A East, a collections storage and research centre, is due to launch next year (the site also includes the BBC Music Studios, David Bowie Center for the Study of the Performing Arts and the new campus of University College London).
“I have been researching the West Kowloon area for ten years and I am interested in its component parts. “You always learn a lot from these kind of forums,” Reeve added, shedding further light on the East Bank scheme. East Bank’s goals outlined in his talk include creating a “ Stratford as a new destination and economic engine for London” and “[raising] Local aspirations and positive perceptions of East London.”
He added: “You have a sense of history working at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The East Bank is a whole new kind of thing.” [Olympics] Heritage Project -[the games] We created a new park, but what park is there for after the Olympics? [post-2012]? “It is a unique cultural area because it combines sports, culture and education… The network of collaborative synergies is far from the scale.”
“I've been looking at the West Kowloon area for ten years and I'm interested in the parts it makes up,” says Tim Reeve, chairman of the Oriental Bank in London.
Peter Kelleher, Victoria and Albert Museum; © Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, 2021
More importantly, how can regions help each other on the sustainability front? “There is no competitive advantage; Everyone is trying to work on the same problem. With sustainability, we can certainly share intelligence and ideas [relating to] He added: “Transportation infrastructure and the sustainability of buildings.”
In another session titled “The Digital Promise,” speakers explored the impact of artificial intelligence, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), the digitization of objects and “mixed reality” exhibitions.
Thomas Campbell, director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, raised key points about the evolution of technology in museums, discussing the early digitization of collections in the early 2000s to “where artificial intelligence takes us to the next level of audience engagement.” . He added that next year, mobile devices will be able to “rely on decades.” [art history] Research” through artificial intelligence, which is “very scary and exciting.”
Sessions scheduled for March 26 at the Hong Kong International Summit will cover topics such as “New Ways of Collaboration and Engagement in the Post-Pandemic Era” and “Rethinking Museum Interpretation in a Global Context.” Art newspaper Media partner of the summit.
