Hong Kong's top art museums neglect solo shows for local contemporary artists

Hong Kong's two largest visual art institutions continue to sidestep a fundamental responsibility: mounting substantial, scholarly solo exhibitions for the city's living contemporary artists, a failure that became strikingly apparent during Seoul Art Week.

While M+ and the government-run Hong Kong Museum of Art (HKMoA) have staged group shows of Hong Kong art, these formats do not provide sufficient depth to allow proper appreciation of each artist's practice. M+ has announced a major exhibition on local cultural influences since the 1970s scheduled for next March, but this too follows the group-show model.

The museum has presented solo shows of Hong Kong artists at the Venice Biennale, yet these remain relatively small, stand-alone projects rather than the career-defining retrospectives that would cement reputations on the international stage. The contrast with Seoul Art Week underscored how rarely Hong Kong institutions spotlight individual local artists in ways that help elevate them globally.

A more fixable problem

This chronic resistance to academically rigorous solo exhibitions represents what one observer called a "little-discussed scandal" that plagues both institutions, and crucially, one they have the power to remedy.

The observation comes amid two recent controversies at M+, Hong Kong's museum of visual culture. The first involved a series of mahjong social nights charging museum members and patrons up to HK$2,500 (US$319) for packages including exhibition tours, meals and social tile-shuffling in the members' lounge. Though mahjong has undergone a "Chinamaxxing makeover" in the West, the game retains somewhat unwholesome associations in Hong Kong even when no money changes hands.

Critics of the "private club" characterisation noted that M+ membership costs only HK$300-600 for year-round admission and lounge access, hardly an elite gatekeeping price. If the museum wishes to hold pai gow tournaments or caai mui drinking games in its "fabulous but underused" members' lounge to build community and generate revenue, it should be allowed to do so.

Security law shadows

The second incident proved more troubling: the last-minute cancellation of a performance by singer-songwriter Wong Hin-yan, who has a history of supporting local protests, in an evening music programme. The episode bore the hallmarks of an opaque blacklisting of Hong Kong creative talent since the introduction of the national security law.

M+ has provided no explanation for the cancellation; Wong took to social media to say the decision was not his. As Wong posted, "it is what it is", and the matter may not be something the M+ team would necessarily control in the current political environment.

Yet the neglect of local contemporary artists through inadequate exhibition programmes remains firmly within institutional control, and addressing it would do far more to support Hong Kong's creative community than any number of mahjong nights.

Source: South China Morning Post