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<\/p>\nAll booms must end, and mainland China\u2019s spectacular period of new museum building in the 2010s was probably destined to fizzle even before the twin tripwires of Covid-19 and an economic slump. Nonetheless, China\u2019s art world was shocked when the news came in August 2022 that Guangzhou\u2019s beloved Times Museum would be shutting that autumn.<\/p>\n
Since 2003, Times\u2019s small space atop an apartment block had hosted some of the most provocative exhibitions and nuanced scholarship in Asian art and built a strong community around it. But it was funded by Times Property, and a long-predicted implosion of the Chinese property sector had finally arrived.<\/p>\n
Many private museums failed to establish sustainable funding models<\/p>\n
Times Guangzhou relaunched last year as a project space. But there have been plenty of other more definitive demises. The Shanghai location of OCAT, a chain of property developments that at one point also had museums in Beijing, Shenzhen and Xi\u2019an, closed indefinitely in summer 2021 after outrage over a video work it exhibited ranking women\u2019s attractiveness. As Covid restrictions deepened, the museum never reopened.<\/p>\n
Qingdao\u2019s TAG Museum this summer announced it was suspending operations. Nanjing\u2019s much vaunted Sifang Art Museum now appears to be a rental space for events, while other standouts like Yinchuan MoCA and Shanghai MoCA have scaled back to mount only modest, occasional exhibitions. In 2023, when the wealthy owners of Long Museum in Shanghai and Chongqing auctioned part of their massive collection, that institution\u2019s future also seemed precarious, though it has continued operating.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe sector has entered a post-boom phase,\u201d says Li Anqi, a curator and historian who has a research focus on Chinese museums. \u201cThe initial rapid expansion\u2014at times, a craze\u2014has cooled down, which is a natural development as perpetual growth is unrealistic.\u201d<\/p>\n
The museum craze of the 2010s brought China hundreds of new art institutions, many of them vanity projects set up by eager new collectors or attached to property developments in pursuit of traffic and tax breaks. According to China\u2019s National Cultural Heritage Administration, in 2024 the number of registered museums in the country increased by 213 to 7,046; researchers Fenghua Zhang and Pascal Courty found that between 1996 and 2015 the number more than trebled, from 1,210 to 3,852.<\/p>\n
\u2018A moment of consolidation\u2019<\/p>\n
But beyond the initial fanfare of flashy facilities and eye-watering budgets, only a few dozen of these museums established reputations for consistent curatorial visions and exhibition programming. \u201cThis current moment presents a valuable opportunity for museum founders to reflect on their work and focus on how to sustainably operate and maintain existing ones,\u201d Li says.<\/p>\n
Philip Tinari, the director and chief executive of UCCA, which has several locations in China, describes 2025 as \u201ca moment of consolidation\u201d. For a while, he says, \u201cdiscourse was dominated by this idea of a kind of infinite expansion\u201d. Now he sees China moving \u201cin a direction where contemporary art doesn\u2019t need to be a kind of catch-all for aspirations and anxieties about the future. Instead, it is\u2014or it\u2019s becoming\u2014a field of cultural production with a specific set of possibilities and audience and reception around it. There\u2019s definitely a maturation that\u2019s happening.\u201d<\/p>\n
Collector-backed foundation spaces are proliferating. \u201cThere are a lot of private individuals who ten or 15 years ago would have been the kind of people to start museums,\u201d Tinari says. \u201cThat passion is getting channelled into slightly more contained and focused projects.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople realise now that a lot goes into starting and running museums,\u201d he adds. \u201cIt\u2019s not as easy as it looks.\u201d<\/p>\n
UCCA, which launched in Beijing in 2007, has branched out to projects in Beidaihe, Yixing, Shanghai and in late September to Jincheng, Shanxi province. It was the focus of a report in July in the South China Morning Post (SCMP) alleging that cashflow issues had caused delays to some staff salaries. In an emailed statement, UCCA said the article \u201cwas riddled with inaccuracies and exaggerations. UCCA is currently in legal proceedings with SCMP over the multiple material and factual errors contained therein.\u201d The museum declined to address the allegations or to specify what was inaccurate.<\/p>\n
In a statement, the South China Morning Post said it stands by its story and UCCA has not initiated any legal proceedings against the newspaper. \u201cThe article in question was prepared following a comprehensive research process,\u201d the SCMP statement says. \u201cThe SCMP is satisfied that the reporting accurately reflects the substance and context of the matters discussed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Similar payment rumours have dogged other institutions, with tax investigations, backdoor art sales and messy divorces among the purported situations facing private museums.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has become clear that many private museums born from this boom failed to establish sustainable funding models or cultivate in-house curatorial and educational teams\u2014both are essential for a museum\u2019s long-term survival,\u201d Li says. \u201cThe private museums that continue to operate such as Rockbund Art Museum [in Shanghai], He Art Museum [Shunde], and By Art Matters [Hanghzou] are typically those with sound financial operations and professional staff who are paid with reasonable salaries and are given opportunities to learn.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shao Shu, the executive director of He Art Museum (HEM), says the museum\u2019s funding structure is \u201cquite healthy\u201d. Founded in 2021 by He Jianfeng, a prolific collector and son of the founder of the electronics manufacturer Midea, HEM receives support from a foundation.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Shao Shu, director of the He Art Museum, says tickets are a dispensable luxury in tight times<\/p>\n
Photo: courtesy He Art Museum<\/p>\n
\u201cThe museum would not be easily influenced by the economy, environments or if the company made bad investments and lost money,\u201d Shao says. Tickets and merchandise also bring in a portion of the budget that is expected to increase annually, currently covering exhibition costs, with the goal of full independence after a decade.<\/p>\n
Falling ticket sales<\/p>\n
Shao says HEM eschews the commercial gallery-funded selling shows that have sustained many other private museums. That revenue stream has slowed, though; even lucrative fashion brand exhibitions have become less common. Admission to HEM costs 150 yuan ($21) but with discounts or free admission for some, the per-head average is just under 100 yuan ($14). The museum sold around 400,000 tickets last year but expects that to drop 20% this year. The reasons, Shao says, are primarily economic; museum tickets are a dispensable luxury when income shrinks. Though growth is projected at 4%-5% for this and next year, youth unemployment hit 18.9% in August.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the ranks of contemporary art lovers in China are growing, but slowly. Shao says many visitors find contemporary art \u201cchallenging\u201d. With the economy slowing, the young, educated core demographic is disproportionately leaving China, or decamping from the big cities to cheaper small towns.<\/p>\n
Government-backed Chinese museums have in recent years moved towards free admission, which Shao believes also cuts into private museums\u2019 visitor numbers. \u201cPeople who don\u2019t care about quality will choose whatever is cheaper … Plus the traditional cultural things showing at the national museums are easier for people to connect with.\u201d<\/p>\n
Public-private collaborations have a mixed track record\u2014Qingdao\u2019s TAG Museum, for instance, suspended operations after losing backing from a cash-strapped local government.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe call for systematic support for private art museums has been voiced for years, yet meaningful policy progress remains limited,\u201d Li says.<\/p>\n
Compared with public museums\u2014particularly those promoting traditional culture and values, or serving as instruments of foreign relations, like Shanghai\u2019s West Bund Museum, which has a ten-year partnership with Centre Pompidou\u2014private contemporary art museums are \u201cespecially vulnerable\u201d, Li says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All booms must end, and mainland China\u2019s spectacular period of new museum building in the 2010s was probably…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248140,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,891,1120,96,10748,86040,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-248139","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-china","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-museums","15":"tag-private-museums","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}