Where art flourishes
Shanghai’s thriving West Bund hosts about a dozen exhibitions at any time
Eight years after the Shanghai World Expo drew millions of visitors to the city, a show there on a much smaller scale but that lacks none of the dazzle is drawing art aficionados from far and wide. The West Bund area, which is home to some of the city’s most famous art establishments such as the Yuz Museum and the Long Museum, is now a thriving art community that hosts about a dozen exhibitions at any time.
The area, about 10 kilometers south of downtown Shanghai, on the western bank of the Huangpu River, across from where the 2010 World Expo was held, covers 9.4 square kilometers. It used to be an industrial zone that included shipyards, factories and a hangar. After the expo, district authorities decided to develop the western bund region into an arts and cultural center.
“I have seen the area really grow,” says Grace Zhang, deputy director of Yuz Museum. “When we opened in 2014 it was just us and the Long Museum.”
The area received a fillip in 2015 when the Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Liu Heung Shing opened the Shanghai Center of Photography there. In 2015, too, the ShanghART Gallery, a leading light in the city’s contemporary art scene, and MadeIn Company, headed by the contemporary artist Xu Zhen, set up shop in the West Bund, and other galleries and studios have followed suit.
One of the events that best highlights the area’s artistic nature is the West Bund Art and Design fair that has taken place every first week of November since 2014. This year the fair will take place from Nov 8 to 11.
Last year 70 galleries, studios and institutions from 17 countries took part. During the event, artworks and installations were exhibited beyond the confines of the museums and in public spaces all over the West Bund area. A new talent section to the fair was introduced last year, featuring emerging artists through a series of solo exhibitions or group shows.
The West Bund has been an important catalyst in the growth of Shanghai’s art market, Zhang says. One reason is the strong government support in the form of financial subsidies for major exhibitions and events as well as policies that nurture and promote the arts.
Culture is one of the four areas, with services, manufacturing and shopping, that the city will promote to make it more competitive and influential, a government paper issued in April said.
More impetus was needed for the city’s cultural growth, the Shanghai Party Secretary, Li Qiang, said, and by attracting prestigious artists and industry leaders, the city could show off its cultural credentials.
The West Bund area is likely to grow in stature, and Zhang said more new office buildings, cultural and creative industry centers and com- mercial facilities will sprout up soon. One of the most notable developments will be the franchise gallery of the Pompidou Centre in Paris.
The new museum, designed by the British architect David Chipperfield, is now being built. The Pompidou Centre says it has signed a renewable five-year deal with the State-owned West Bund Group to stage exhibitions in the new museum from next year.
The deal is “the most important long-term cultural exchange project” between China and France, and will “give an important place to contemporary Chinese art” in the new Shanghai facility, the Pompidou Centre says.
Another art establishment located in the area is Tank Space, a compound with five giant oil tanks, a water tank, a wharf and other structures that once served as fuel storage facilities for nearby Longhua Airport. Qiao Zhibing, an avid collector of contemporary art who heads Tank Space, says the five tanks will soon be transformed into exhibition spaces and connected to one another by passageways. The water tank had already been used as an art space during a series of exhibitions that took place in September.
Qiu Yun, a spokeswoman for Tank Space, said the new center aims to build a platform that can bring together elements of nature, the city and contemporary art.
“Our target audience is the public. We hope everybody can appreciate art and enjoy it.”
The Yuz Museum, founded by Budi Tek, a Chinese-Indonesian entrepreneur, philanthropist and art collector, covers 9,000 square meters and used to be a hangar that was part of Longhua Airport. The main gallery covers 3,000 square meters, making it an ideal location for showcasing large installations and interactive projects such as Rain Room in 2015.
Rain Room, created by Random International, an experimental art studio in London and Berlin, is a space featuring falling water that visitors can walk freely through while remaining dry. The installation was also exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Barbican Centre in London, but the version staged in Shanghai was the largest.
After drawing thousands of visitors to this unique installation three years ago, the artists are now back with their first solo exhibition in Asia, titled Everything & Nothing, which is on at the Yuz Museum until Oct 14. It features new works alongside established pieces created by Random International, which dabbles with new interactive technologies to create experimental experiences.
This year the Yuz Museum announced a partnership with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Michael Govan, chief executive and director of the Los Angeles museum, says it has been active in Asia for many years, establishing itself as a leader in collecting traditional and contemporary art. The partnership will help the museum extend its reach in Shanghai and introduce contemporary art from Asia, especially China, to wider audiences everywhere.
Located two blocks away from the Yuz Museum is the Long Museum, which is renowned for its collection of important artworks from China and abroad such as a 22-million-yuan ($3.47 million) tea cup from the 14th century and a painting by Amedeo Modigliani that cost $170.4 million.
The Long Museum was founded by Liu Yiqian and his wife Wang Wei in 2012, and expanded from its initial location in Pudong to its 40,000square-meter new facility in the West Bund in 2014. This year the museum hosted a large exhibition featuring masterpieces from Dutch portrait artists such as Rembrandt, Johannes Vermeer and Frans Hals.
Our target audience is the public. We hope everybody can appreciate art and enjoy it.”
Qiu Yun spokeswoman for Tank Space