Following the formal signing of the Memorandum of Understanding of Cooperation for the Hong Kong Palace Museum between the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority (WKCDA) and the Palace Museum, the WKCDA launches a range of public consultation activities to involve the public and stakeholders in taking this landmark project forward.
The WKCDA is presenting a six-week exhibition at the City Gallery in Central to introduce the Hong Kong Palace Museum project to the public. Mrs Carrie Lam, WKCDA Board Chairman, Mr Duncan Pescod, Chief Executive Officer of WKCDA, Mrs Betty Fung, Permanent Secretary for Home Affairs; Dr Louis Ng, Deputy Director (Culture) of Leisure and Cultural Services Department, Mr Stephen Tang, former Deputy Director of Architectural Services Department, and Mr Rocco Yim, Design Consultant of Hong Kong Palace Museum attended today’s event.
The Palace Museum is a UNESCO World Heritage Site renowned for its vast collection of over 1.8 million artefacts including paintings, ceramics, calligraphy, and antiquities belonging to the imperial collections. In the future, members of the community and visitors to Hong Kong will be able to appreciate these invaluable nationally protected cultural objects in Hong Kong, in the West Kowloon Cultural District (WKCD).
Occupying a 10,000-square metre site at the western harbour front, adjacent to the Art Park, the Hong Kong Palace Museum will be a major arts and cultural facility of the WKCD with facilities including exhibition galleries, activity rooms, a lecture theatre, souvenir shop and restaurant. Part of the gallery space will be used for permanent exhibitions showcasing significant imperial relics as well as the history of the Palace Museum. Upon completion, the Hong Kong Palace Museum will not only enhance the appeal and attraction of the WKCD as an arts and cultural hub, but also further define Hong Kong as the gateway to cultural exchange between the East and the West.
“The WKCDA is very keen to engage the public and stakeholders on this unique and exciting project. This public consultation exercise on the Hong Kong Palace Museum will cover the arts and cultural sector, professional groups as well as the general public. We hope, through this exercise, the city will see the benefits of this unprecedented project and its potential to enrich the arts and cultural life of our citizens.” said Mr Pescod.
Among other things, the public consultation exercise will collect public views on the design, programming, and the learning and interpretation opportunities of the Hong Kong Palace Museum. The outcome of this exercise will be reported to the WKCDA Board for consideration. Thanks to the generous donation of $3.5 billion from the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust to cover the capital costs of the project, the new museum is expected to open to the public by 2022. Similar to the governance structure for M+, the WKCDA is planning to set up a wholly-owned subsidiary company under the WKCDA Board, with a museum board governing the new museum. The WKCDA will be responsible for the planning, construction as well as the curatorial matters, management and day-to-day operation of the Hong Kong Palace Museum.
“The Hong Kong Palace Museum will provide access to one of the world’s most important and valuable imperial Chinese collections. The Palace Museum’s commitment to share their collections through a long-term loan arrangement signals a pivotal point in international museum practice given that the Palace Museum has never agreed to an arrangement of this nature before. This new museum project demonstrates the determination to value cultural heritage more broadly. Having the Hong Kong Palace Museum in the WKCD offers an unprecedented opportunity for exchange between the Hong Kong Palace Museum and M+ to explore the rich visual culture of both historic and contemporary times. It will also create possibilities for presenting and interpreting the Palace Museum’s collections through a new and groundbreaking perspective,” said Ms Suhanya Raffel, Executive Director of M+ Museum.
Mr Rocco Yim of Rocco Design Architects Limited has been appointed by the WKCDA Board as the design consultant of the Hong Kong Palace Museum project. Born and educated in Hong Kong, Mr Yim is an internationally renowned architect who is highly regarded for his expertise in the design and execution of world class museum buildings. The two museums he designed, namely Guangdong Museum and the Yunnan Provincial Museum, were presented with The Hong Kong Institute of Architects Medal of the Year Outside Hong Kong and the First Prize Award, International Invited Competition in recent years.
“The development of Hong Kong Palace Museum is a mission that I am fully prepared to take on with your support and participation. It is a unique challenge but also a great opportunity for our city. I firmly believe the museum will contribute to the richness of our cultural scene enabling exchanges and interactions between east and west, past and present,” said Mr Yim.
The Hong Kong Palace Museum Project Exhibition
Date : 11 January to 22 February 2017
Time : 10:00 to 18:00
(Closed on Tuesdays (except Public Holidays) and the first two days of the Chinese New Year)
Address: 3/F, City Gallery, 3 Edinburgh Place, Central, Hong Kong (Near City Hall Lower Block)
Remarks
About West Kowloon Cultural District
Located on Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour, the West Kowloon Cultural District is one of the largest cultural projects in the world. Its vision is to create a vibrant new cultural quarter for Hong Kong. With a complex of theatres, performance spaces, and M+, the West Kowloon Cultural District will produce and host world-class exhibitions, performances, and cultural events, as well as provide 23 hectares of public open space, including a two-kilometre waterfront promenade.
About M+
Hong Kong’s museum for visual culture – encompassing twentieth and twenty-first century art, design and architecture, and moving image from Hong Kong, China, Asia, and beyond – M+ will be one of the largest museums of 20th and 21st century visual culture in the world. Located adjacent to the future waterfront park of the West Kowloon Cultural District, the museum building, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, is scheduled to open in 2019.
About The Palace Museum
Situated in the very heart of Beijing, the Palace Museum is a UNESCO World Heritage Site renowned for its vast holding of over 1.8 million artefacts including paintings, ceramics, calligraphy, and antiquities belonging to the imperial collections. The Palace Museum houses many nationally protected valuable cultural objects, but due to its huge scale only a small fraction (0.6%) of this extraordinary collection is able to be displayed to the public at any given time.
The collection includes over 367,000 ceramics, over 180,000 textile pieces, 53,000 paintings, 75,000 calligraphy, 19,000 lacquer items and over 23,000 jade objects. In 2016 the Palace Museum attracted a record of 16 million visitors.
Hong Kong’s Leisure and Cultural Services Department has presented a number of exhibitions which display the rich diversity of the Palace Museum’s collection. The four thematic exhibitions held since 2012 have been extremely popular with the public attracting over a total of some 430,000 visitors.
