New Yuz Museum Shanghai venue continues focus on world art
Since its opening in 2014, Yuz Museum Shanghai has made a name for itself as one of the most interesting new additions to Shanghai’s art scene. As a non-profit institution, the museum aims to serve as a leader in exhibiting contemporary Chinese art and to build a prominent reputation for contemporary art in China.
The museum was founded by Budi Tek, a Chinese-Indonesian entrepreneur, philanthropist and collector. Born in 1957 in Jakarta, Indonesia, to a Chinese family, Tek studied in Hong Kong and Singapore from 1969 to the 1970s. In the 1980s, he went to the United States for further study, and built a corporate empire in the agricultural industry.
In 2007, he established the Yuz Foundation, and followed that by opening the Yuz Museum Shanghai in 2014. Tek was an Asia-Pacific member of Tate Britain. In 2017, he was awarded the Officier de la Légion D’honneur, France’s highest merit.
The museum’s name, Yuz, is derived from Tek’s Chinese name, Yu Deyao.
Tek never hesitated to share his collections. He donated a number of Chinese contemporary artworks to the Centre Pompidou, the Singapore Art Museum and the Brooklyn Museum in New York.
“This is the job of the Yuz Foundation, to participate on the world art stage,” Tek once said. “It is also our responsibility to encourage well-known art museums in the West to pay more attention to top Chinese contemporary art, and to assist them in collecting Chinese contemporary art items in a systematic manner.”
The museum is committed to drawing the world’s attention to Shanghai, advancing the development of contemporary Chinese art, actively engaging in the field of art education, and promoting cultural dialogue between East and West.
Yuz Museum Shanghai has been the home of many internationally acclaimed exhibitions including the world’s largest Giacometti Retrospective; the Rain Room; the Asia premieres of Andy Warhol’s “Shadows;” KAWS’s first institutional exhibition on China’s mainland, “Where the End Starts;” and “Charlie Chaplin: A Vision.”
It is a great loss that Tek passed away in 2022.
Even now, many art fans remember the Giacometti exhibition in 2016 in Shanghai because of its outstanding quality and standard.
The exhibition was also the one Tek was most proud of at the museum. Despite being unwell, he insisted on attending the opening event. He flew from the United States, where he was under treatment, to Shanghai, saying that otherwise, “it would be a regret for the rest of my life.”