West Kowloon Cultural District (WKCD)—the arts district at the southern tip of Hong Kong’s Kowloon Peninsula, on the shores of Victoria Harbor—is making its mark on the world’s cultural scene. This week, the WKCD is hosting a major summit that brings together more than 20 directors and commissioners from 12 countries, along with 1,000 delegates (Linking cultures/High bridgesMarch 24-25).
At the summit, the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority, the organization behind Hong Kong’s art hub, signed a number of memorandums of understanding with more than 20 cultural institutions from around the world to foster relationships with other institutions and cultural centres. The MoUs cover collection sharing, conservation collaborations, and scientific research and education and exchange programs.
The M+ museum of contemporary visual culture, a WKCD foundation, has agreements with seven museums around the world, including the UK’s Tate and France’s Center Pompidou. Hong Kong’s Palace Museum, which runs a rotating program showcasing more than 900 artifacts from Beijing’s Palace Museum, has teamed up with Madrid’s Museo Nacional del Prado and London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, among others.
“The memoir is a statement of intentions regarding cooperation and exchanges in the exhibition [with the Hong Kong Palace Museum]”, said Tim Reeve, Deputy Director of the V&A Art Newspaper “We have a close relationship with the team there; exhibitions are the focal point.”
At the opening of the summit, John KC Lee, director general of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, said: “Under the protection of the unique principle of ‘one country, two systems,’ Hong Kong is the only city in the world that has both. China’s advantage and global advantage.” His comments reflected the city’s balancing act. they stand out in particular in light of a controversial new security law that was implemented on March 23 (Article 23).
Reeve outlined the challenges and benefits of developing the East Bank, a new arts and education center located in East London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, at a summit entitled “Cultural Districts’ contributions to social and economic transformation of cities”. The session also featured speakers from Qatar (Shaika Al-Nassr, director of the Museum of Islamic Art) and Australia (Katrina Sedgwick, director of the Melbourne Arts Precinct Corporation).
Shaika Al-Nassr, director of the Qatar Museum of Islamic Art, gave a talk on how cultural districts can create social and economic change within cities.
Courtesy of the Museum of Islamic Art
Reeve also chairs the East Bank board, which is behind the UK’s ‘newest cultural quarter’, where the V&A East Museum and Storehouse sites will be launched next year (the site also includes BBC Music Studios, Sadler’s Wells East and the new). University College London and UAL’s London College of Fashion campuses).
“I’ve been looking at West Kowloon for ten years and I’m interested in its ingredients. You always learn a lot from forums like this,” added Reeve, shedding more light on the East Bank scheme. In his speech, his goals for the East Bank include: “establishing 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 V&A. It’s a whole new kind of East Bank [Olympics] heritage project—[the games] he created a new park but what is the park for the Olympic Games [post-2012]? It is a unique cultural district, because it unites sports, culture and education… the network of collaboration synergies is beyond scale.’
“I’ve been looking at West Kowloon for ten years and I’m interested in its components,” says Tim Reeve, chairman of the board of the East Bank of London.
Peter Kelleher, V&A Museum; © Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, 2021
Crucially, how can neighborhoods help each other in terms of sustainability? “There is no competitive advantage; everyone is trying to work on the same problem. With persistence, we can certainly share intelligence and ideas [relating to] how sustainable transport infrastructure and buildings are”, he added.
In another session called “Promise of Digital”, the speakers discussed the exhibitions of Artificial Intelligence, fungible tokens (NFT), digitization of objects and “mixed reality”.
Thomas Campbell, director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, raised key questions about the development of technology in museums, discussing the early digitization of collections in the early 2000s, “where AI takes us to the next level of viewing.” .
In the coming year, he added, handheld devices “will have the opportunity to come out of the decades [art history] research” through AI, which is “scary and incredibly exciting”. Other speakers included Turkish artist Refik Anadol.
Sessions at the HK International Summit on March 26 will cover topics such as “new ways of collaborating and sharing in the post-pandemic era” and “rethinking museum interpretation in a global context”. Art Newspaper is the media partner for the summit.
UPDATE (March 28): The article was amended to include more details about the East Bank.
