Since that time our location has changed to a separate building; Hong Kong stopped being a British colony and became part of the People’s Republic of China. The way we apply our vision at the museum has changed considerably from what we started with. And it has prepared us to think about how museums work as more and more of humanity learns how to live in between the real and the virtual, the local and the global, the present and the past.

Back in 1962, Hong Kong was a British colony and the first curator was a British man named John Warner who put on an exhibit called “Hong Kong Art Today,” bringing together artists working in Chinese and Western media. This was the first time there had been a professional venue for art in Hong Kong. Before that artists showed in restaurants and artists working with Western media showed in churches or hotels that were not easily accessible to the public. So the show was a historic occasion, and a period of exchange, between two types of artists that did not usually show together and a public that did not usually get to see art. The museum continued to hold these shows and also granted awards to outstanding artists.

The museum was important then because we brought art works from overseas to show in Hong Kong, so that art lovers would have an opportunity to see them. At this time people didn’t travel the way they do now. Other museums soon opened in Hong Kong, so we stopped being the only one. Yet with the diverse collection that we built of Chinese antiquities, traditional Chinese paintings, and contemporary art, we saw ourselves as a convenient place to see art in all its plurality.

Admission to the museum has always been free, or very low-priced. From 1962 to 1990 we were free. In 1991 we moved to our new building in Tsim Sha Tsui and began charging $10HK, which is very low (about $1.25 in the U.S.). Since last August all government museums have been free again, although for blockbuster shows that we have to pay to bring here we do charge $20 to 30 HK.

Ever since the beginning, the core business of this museum has been free art education. We bring school children to the museum, which is important because Hong Kong doesn’t have art education at the grammar school level. Visual art is not considered pragmatic. So getting children to the museum is important because museum going has to start very early. If a child doesn’t go to a museum by the age of seven they’re unlikely go on their own when they’re older.

We are also here for general visitors to nurture an interest in art. In Hong Kong people do not think of museum-going as part of life. You really have to make an effort to go. There’s a different environment and context in Hong Kong than in some European countries where families often go to museums. I think that one reason is that some parents find it embarrassing when kids ask questions and they don’t know the answers. In the West, the parents often take children to art they don’t know and the family makes guesses together. In Hong Kong, parents are more reserved.

The other population we’re working with is the senior generation of retirees who are not educated in art but would like to be. Hong Kong’s population is aging and we will need to work with them in the coming years.

In the past we always talked about globalizing the museum. Did we meet global benchmarks, were we a global city? It used to be that we’d bring in exhibits from London, but traveling exhibits don’t make sense anymore. Hong Kong is obviously a very global city, and so people travel and whenever they go to London, for instance, they go to the British Museum. And there is a crushing sameness to global exhibits. I know that when I travel to see the art “biennials,” I’m always seeing the same thing and the same artists. When you get more globalized it’s harder to find anything different. And we have to stay different to be unique and sustainable.

When people came to realize that they cannot do without “local,” they invented the word “glocal” to be global and local as the same time. Yet “global” still came first. Instead, I’ve started thinking about doing “lobal” programming—really trying to put the local sensibility first in looking at a globalized situation. This is my current vision of the museum.

This shift to the local mirrors Hong Kong’s history. From the 1990’s through the early 2000’s the museum reflected the city’s status of being very cosmopolitan. But in 1997, at the time of the handover, there was a growing sense among young people of the importance of their local identity. They were very concerned about preserving local landmarks and old buildings. But don’t get me wrong in thinking that when we say “Hong Kong,” we are romanticizing the rural or being nostalgic. However, we began to look more at our own culture and nurture our own artists.

Hong Kong is so internationally-oriented that, by telling local stories in our programming, we inevitably end up telling the story of the world. Our collections, which draw from both the Chinese and the Western cultural tradition also fit Hong Kong’s history, style, and language.

So whether we’re bringing exhibits from mainland China or from Paris and London, we present them with a Hong Kong twist. We don’t use the canned exhibits; we feel we need to go deeper to make it particular to Hong Kong.

For example, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Return of Hong Kong to China, we’re showing an exhibit that comes from the Palace Museum in Beijing. It’s a collection of artwork and relics from the Yangxindian (the Hall of Mental Cultivation) —the working and living space of the emperors of the Qing Dynasty. Here, we’ve rebuilt the way visitors experience the exhibit. Before entering you’ll feel like you’re entering a palace. Instead of putting the objects in showcases, we put them in “real” settings as they used to be in the palace. We also created an immersive visual experience for visitors to appreciate not only the artifacts but to replicate the experience of a palace visit.

In all, it is not object-oriented, but a total viewing experience which starts even before you enter into the gallery. We’ve installed a grand staircase at the entrance of the museum as well as a courtyard leading up to the gallery. Above all, we promote the Hall as a “home-office” of the emperor, a concept that is more accessible to contemporary audiences, connecting historical narratives to modern terminology. Of course we also created an area where people can take photos of themselves in the hall to let them see themselves a part of history. Our approach was so different from the Palace Museum’s that they sent a film crew to document what we did and how we did it.

But we do the same thing with Western art. A few years ago there was a traveling exhibition of Andy Warhol. We decided to highlight his visit to Hong Kong in the 1980s. We placed his work “Silver Clouds”—a set of large pillow-shaped silver balloons—right at the entrance of the gallery. Going under the balloons to the exhibition area prepared visitors for an imaginative journey. They were venturing into the creative mind of the artist, and leaving the real world behind.

Right now, the museum is closed—we’ve been renovating for the past three years, and so we’ve used that time to go into the community. We’ve really focused on children and have developed different art appreciation programs that include a mobile museum that visits schools. And we’ve made a set of videos about local Hong Kong artists working in a wide range of media, including painting, conceptual art, ceramics, photography, seal-carving, etc. Hong Kong’s schools lack local teaching materials: Most have been developed in the West and though they include Van Gogh, they leave out local artists. Our hope is that Hong Kong children will enter into the art world through the visions of Hong Kong artists.

Understanding art, particularly in Hong Kong, where citizens must work with people and institutions all over the world, means creating new knowledge and new meanings. Juxtaposing art and our viewers’ experiences is a way to help people reach new understandings in a changing world. Often our work is to bring people in and show them things they know in a new, comparative way.

This style of experiencing art reminds me of Charles Darwin. Everyone saw layers of fossils but they never thought of how to make sense of them in a holistic and comparative way. And then Darwin came and he told a story of evolution that made sense of the layers of fossils. Conventionally, museum collections are classified in way that compartmentalizes knowledge in disconnected ways. Like Darwin, we’d like to consider things that others would not; we’d like to look at ideas less for how they “fit” but to see where they lead.

Hong Kong is strategically positioned. Living between China and the West, between the very old and the very new, it’s in the Hong Kong blood to be hybrid in the sense that we are used to playing around with culturally paradoxical concepts. So it’s natural for us to see in a comparative way. It’s the Hong Kong method!

This essay was transcribed from an interview.

The post Seeing Art from a Local Perspective in Hyper-Global Hong Kong appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

I learned more about how to do that a few months ago, through a show I curated called One World Exposition #like4like. The exhibition, which presented 18 millennial media artists from Hong Kong and mainland China, took place at K11, a shopping mall blended with art galleries. It attracted more than 15,000 visitors within two months. It also went massively viral on social media. During its two-month exhibition period, #like4like appeared in more than a thousand photographs by visitors and became the most hashtagged and geotagged exhibition on Instagram in Hong Kong.

What were the reasons for this success?

One reason is content. In recent years, the heated art market has transformed artwork into a highly profitable commodity, creating a phenomenon of excessive commoditization. Many artworks are produced to be desirable in the art market, resulting in many easy-on-the-eye artworks shown in exhibitions and art fairs. At a time when nonprofit institutions, commercial galleries and auction houses are undergoing a process of corporatization and global expansion, many argue that the disengagement of art has already taken place.

Hearse Delusional Mandala by the artist Lu Yang, shown at the exhibition One World Exposition #like4like. Courtesy of One World Exposition #like4like.

Because the content of the exhibition is widely different from the previous exhibitions at the mall, #like4like has proven that mainstream audiences crave something niche and aesthetically challenging. Apart from the frequent shoppers at K11, the show also attracted massive young audiences who do not typically attend art exhibitions. While the millennial generation has been called “socially conscious, value-driven, and forward-looking,” presenting works that echo the personal values of these youth can potentially turn them into visitors.

But interface is also important. In Hong Kong, where shopping malls proliferate, using them to bring art to the public makes a lot of sense. During the Art Basel month this year, almost every shopping mall in Hong Kong showed art—from masters such as Picasso to the contemporary digital artist Julius Popp. That means that for a Hong Kong audience, seeing art in their everyday lives is nothing new. Curators have to create an interface that transforms the audience’s everyday shopping experience.

When creating the #like4like exhibition, therefore, I integrated technology that encouraged viewers to communicate. While some galleries ban the use of cameras, #like4like used digital culture to promote audience engagement. We provided audiences with the use of Snapchat Spectacles to record and upload their exhibition experience in the “Memories” section of a Snapchat account. #like4like also included “selfie points” with signs, graphics, and mirrors designed to encourage the audience to photograph themselves.

One audience member took a picture of herself licking the mirror as if she was kissing herself; another audience member lay on the floor, initiating Buddha postures in response to a work about reincarnation. Through these immersive and Instagram-friendly exhibition designs, #like4like strived to break away from the uptightness visitors might feel in museums and galleries.

The exhibition also worked to transform the stereotype of selfies—as expressions of digital narcissism and an unrealistic desire for validation through social media. #like4like saw social media as part of the creative potential of self-expression. I wanted the exhibition to provide an interface where viewers could meet themselves.

As they did, they also provided publicity. The rise of social media and digital culture has desensitized younger generations to conventional promotion and marketing. Social power has become decentralized. Digital natives can make formerly fringe groups into powerhouses. Among this “crowdculture”—the term that Cultural Strategy Group founder Douglas Holt coined for the phenomenon—decisions are often driven by word of mouth, particularly if the sources of knowledge and advice are Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs, as they’re called), from politicians to celebrities to social media trend-setters with strong followings. (The Kardashians are KOLs.)

In the commercial world, brands collaborate with KOLs to extend their reach—but the art world has been slower to explore their impact. #like4like became popular among the younger generations in part through the power of the KOLs—which helped us reach a larger, younger audience. For example, one KOL from Hong Kong, called Poortravel, posted a picture of #like4like on Instagram, and within 24 hours, the post received over 9,000 “likes” and 300 comments. As commenters tagged their friends, the very nature of internet communication fostered promotion and engagement.

An Instagram photo taken by a visitor to the art exhibition One World Exposition #like4like. Courtesy of @gnitmiy/Instagram.

Instagram engagement, though, is about more than increasing audience. It’s also about allowing the audience to construct knowledge. Scholar of museum education George E. Hein describes the didactic learning model by which knowledge and information are often transmitted in museums as trying to “instill a specific message in the visiting public.” But this tactic is not the only possibility. #like4like adopts an inquiry-based approach. I crafted an exhibition design that focuses on visitors’ interactions with exhibits. This allows for informal learning among gallery-goers while promoting multiple interpretations of each work by tapping individual viewers’ knowledge and experience.

For example, hundreds of audience members took selfies in front of Chen Wei’s piece “Unprecedented Freedom”—which consists of a neon sign with the title words. “Freedom” immediately caught the attention of audiences, especially in relation to the British colonial legacy in Hong Kong. On Instagram, posts of and selfies with this piece were often captioned with ruminations about what freedom is or comments that directly relate the piece to Hong Kong politics. Other captions were more personal. One spent more than 100 words describing the viewer’s love story. The variety of these posts emphasized that there is no single correct interpretation for this or any work of art.

Now that digital media gives almost every member of a museum audience a platform, museums can welcome visitors as active interpreters. Social media allows “exhibitions” to extend beyond a physical space—to become an open, never-ending event completed by the audience. While opening up engagement opportunities, this phenomenon also reminds audiences that knowledge is always mediated.

The use of social media in #like4like was one of the exhibition’s significant accomplishments. Because of it, I felt like I took more from the audiences than what I offered through my curation. The show taught me that curators can and must use technologies to create more powerful connections among people. Technology can widen the scope of art exhibitions and the power of community engagement.

The post Our Exhibition Embraced Selfies, Snapchat, and Shopping Malls—and Went Viral appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

We are American expatriates who have lived in Hong Kong for years studying policy challenges facing transitional societies, but we don’t normally consider ourselves activists. We were out there because we have seen a disturbing erosion in the political freedoms and rights promised to our city since the 1997 handover to China, when it was agreed that Hong Kong would operate under “one country, two systems” for 50 years until 2047. Concern bubbled to the surface in 2003, when the Hong Kong government proposed security legislation that gave it the power to quash “subversion,” defined broadly to including legitimate dissidence and free speech. A 2012 effort to introduce national education reform promoting controversial “Chinese patriotism lessons” heightened concern. Both proposals were shelved after massive public protests, which were legal. Now, despite allowing everyone to vote for the chief executive in 2017, Beijing has established an ideological litmus test (candidates must “love the country”) and raised the requirements for becoming a candidate such that it effectively allows the Chinese Communist Party to choose the winner. In addition, fears were further raised by the language and timing of a June 2014 “white paper” that made it clear Hong Kong enjoys its autonomy entirely at the Chinese Communist Party’s discretion, sparking this movement that has gone beyond legal protests into occupying roads and other forms of civil disobedience.

Moreover, we were in the streets to acknowledge the growing discontent among Hong Kong residents over a widening economic disparity and the government’s role in creating it. In a city of millionaires and billionaires, where many well-off Mainland visitors happily spend their wealth, one-fifth of Hong Kong’s population currently lives below the poverty line (equivalent to $461 a month). Small business owners and entrepreneurs are finding it increasingly difficult to pay the escalating rent. The uneven distribution of wealth has only been exacerbated by Beijing’s strategy of allowing a few friendly tycoons’ businesses to grow exponentially, thereby consolidating power in a manageable number of “leaders” and stabilizing the political environment.

Our friends and family have been split about whether these protests are the right approach. Those who oppose the protests tend to view the relationship between China and Hong Kong as one of parent and child, do not see real threats to Hong Kong’s autonomy, and focus on the short-term view that Beijing will never give Hong Kong genuine universal suffrage when other parts of China don’t have it. But we reject the parent-child analogy of politics, and hold a longer view that is corroborated by history: Citizen protests, even ones that fail, are often necessary for societies to take incremental steps towards more equal and accountable states. We all share a baseline concern for the instability and economic distress brought about by protests, but we differ in choosing to weather the storm or to try to oppose the government directly.

We chose the more direct approach, which is how we ended up with the surreal experience of getting tear-gassed for the first time. Hong Kong protesters have long played by the rules–seeking advance approval for polite, organized marches. And the police have long enjoyed not only a sterling international reputation for their restraint when controlling crowds, but also a tight-knit and trusting relationship with the people. So we in Hong Kong have relegated tear gas in our collective consciousness to Hollywood or war zones, not thinking it would be possible in one of the safest and most orderly cities in the world.

Until it was. While we got away with minimal injuries, we saw plenty of people who were doubled over in pain on the street, crying as others washed out their eyes, or gasping for air. The protestors’ attempts to shield themselves with umbrellas have given rise to the nickname of this protest as the “Umbrella Movement.” Beyond its health effects, the tear gas helped us recognize the chasm that had been growing between the Hong Kong government and its people.

Beneath the shimmering skyscrapers, Hong Kong has prided itself on the rule of law and self-restraint when it comes to using the overwhelming force it possesses. This illusion was destroyed when the police crossed the line into violence: resorting to pepper spray, batons, and tear gas against peaceful protesters. It was further aggravated by an element of unchecked thuggery–organized bands, many with suspected triad connections, attacked protesters in the city’s Mong Kok area on October 3 and 4. The police largely stood by while this happened, in contrast to their earlier willingness to use force against peaceful protestors. Hong Kong residents realized that they had mistaken the orderliness and proceduralism of the Hong Kong government for benevolence.

The way in which the police carried out tear gas attacks on September 28 is even more worrisome. In both the Admiralty and Central districts, we saw police hurl gas canisters haphazardly, often into unsuspecting crowds, letting the toxins disperse in the air, attacking without regard to subject or intent. In an ensuing press conference, the police officially justified their decision in the name of public safety, saying they launched the tear gas to prevent stampedes and restore order. From what we have seen in our studies, however, gassing usually causes chaotic stampedes and injury. The only reason there were not massive injuries was the surprising levelheadedness of the protesters. With each attack, the protesters walked calmly away; the uninjured ones then returned under the instruction of organizers once the gas had dissipated. The police have reiterated their justifications. The public response was telling: Citizen participation in the protest surged after the tear gas and reports of thuggery.

Tear gas and other forms of violence are, of course, used by police to quell protests all over the world, and some commentators have been correct to point out that the police response would have been much more brutal elsewhere. However, these protests have typically been more peaceful and orderly than elsewhere; we witnessed protesters cleaning the streets in between rounds of tear gas, and when we saw some people throwing water bottles at the riot police, other protesters quickly admonished them. This rarity that has caught the attention of the international community, and the violence happened in a place where the police don’t typically react this way. So the situation felt like a betrayal. The time the decision was made to launch the first canister of tear gas was the moment the trust between state and citizen, and especially between the Hong Kong police and people, was lamentably lost. Whether that trust can be regained is entirely up to the government.

The actions of the administration during this protest do not bode well for the civility of future Hong Kong protests. And indeed, after a brief lull, the situation has escalated perhaps inevitably: In the early morning of October 15, police took action to clear protesters from a road with batons and pepper spray, but also attacked human rights observers wearing identification. And, a video has surfaced of police allegedly beating a handcuffed protestor whom they suspected of throwing water at them. The Hong Kong protesters have shown enormous self-discipline in adhering to the principle of non-violence thus far, but that may not last forever.

It’s highly likely that Umbrella Movement protestors took note of Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement from March to April of this year when students rose to combat a rushed trade agreement with China, fearing that economic dependence would eventually become a political crutch as well. There, too, students went from largely legal protests to occupying the legislature for several weeks. There, too, the police responded with violence (water cannons and batons). There, too, the students remained organized, peaceful, self-governing, and highly considerate. (For example, they designated smoking quotas so as to not discomfort non-smokers, and they cleaned the legislative building when they finally left.) To end the protests, the government promised to initiate a review of the trade agreement and to implement greater legislative transparency, which are still being negotiated. We can only hope–though we acknowledge it is sadly unlikely–that Hong Kong’s protests get resolved in a similar way.

Taiwan is, of course, a democratic system that is more accountable to the population, while the Hong Kong government is under no such constraint. Indeed, that is the existential issue behind the protests, and certainly not one that can be resolved with tear gas.

The post Burned by Betrayal and 87 Rounds of Tear Gas in Hong Kong appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

I am also a Chinese-American immigrant, but I have a much more fluid identity than my great-grandfather. I have a foot in each country, and I have a life where being American and being Chinese are no longer exclusive.

My family’s American journey started when my great-grandpa came to this country by way of Angel Island, the Ellis Island of the West. Emigrants from China before my great-grandpa had named San Francisco “Gold Mountain”—both for the literal gold in its hills and its metaphorical power. But gold wasn’t the only draw. Tens of thousands of men from China had come to work on the railroads since the 1860s. That’s what drew my great-grandpa to California. He came alone, leaving his wife and children back in Guangdong province in southern China.

My grandpa was just 1 at the time. I don’t know if Great-Grandpa had hoped to bring the entire family over, but Great-Grandmother died young, and the railroads were no place for young children. So Grandpa stayed in Jiangmen, where he later married and raised my mother and her four siblings. Mom tells happy stories of a simple childhood, playing with sticks and beads for fun, even though the country was in a state of constant upheaval as a result of the Japanese occupation and then the Chinese Civil War, which resulted in the formation of the People’s Republic of China. In the late 1960s, around the start of the Cultural Revolution—the most intense of the purges by Mao Zedong’s followers of those deemed traditionalists and “capitalist roaders”—Grandpa brought the family to Oakland to join his father, who had become a carpenter. My grandpa’s family was not specifically targeted, but the tension in the air was palpable. The U.S. had loosened its immigration laws by then, allowing families to reunite.

Great-Grandpa, who came to California to work on the railroads

For my grandparents, this was a land of refuge and stability. Grandpa worked as a kitchen helper at Dave’s Coffee Shop, and Grandma worked in a garment factory. I remember she had a stash of designer labels like Jordache, and would sew them into our sweaters, which made the back of our necks itchy. Grandpa and Grandma did not have grand ambitions; they just wanted their children to have food on the table and a roof over their heads. They believed that as long as their family had a peaceful life, they would be content.

Mom was 16 when she arrived and attended Oakland Tech High School, where she worked hard on her English and went on to UC Berkeley, at the height of 1960s counterculture and student activism. Mom lived in a co-op and has hilarious tales of flushing her roommate’s joints down the toilet because she didn’t like the smell of the smoke, as well as theories on the lasting effects of tear gas on the nervous system, having been exposed to it as a matter of course between classes. She met Dad at a Chinese student group on campus in the early 1970s.

My dad was born at the end of World War II in Nanchang, by the Yangtze River in southeast China, but his father moved his family to Hong Kong and set up Hong Kong’s first evening newspaper. Dad came to the U.S. for college, as did most of his siblings. At the time, the children of well-to-do families were often sent to the West for university.

Mom and Dad moved our family between Hong Kong and California a number of times. I was born in Hong Kong, because my parents had moved back to help with the family newspaper when Dad’s father passed suddenly. They returned to the California to set up an import-export business, and had my sister. In the mid-1980s, their business brought our family back to Hong Kong.

Wherever we were, my parents carried with them the American ideal that merit trumped connections. I was raised with the belief that we could make it on our own. As long as we worked hard, harder than everyone else, we would eventually get ours. “The Tortoise and the Hare” was our bedtime story. And my parents’ hope for my sister and me was that we would find stable jobs as engineers or scientists. It was never a directive but was conveyed through tales of humanity majors working the gas pump.

We both studied science in college; I followed in my parents’ footsteps at Berkeley, and my sister attended MIT. I majored in material science and engineering. Even though I had spent a significant amount of time in Oakland as a child, there were still plenty of things I didn’t understand, like how to order a sandwich without grassy weeds in it (alfalfa sprouts). Or when it was appropriate to wear tie-dye. After the O.J. Simpson verdict was read, I found it strange that newscasters would ask people on the street how the trial made them “feel”; it was even stranger that viewers might actually care. The news in Hong Kong at the time would have reported what happened, and left it at that.

Grandpa (in the black suit) and my mom’s side of the family (left) and Grandpa’s cousins (right)

Going to college at Berkeley changed the course of my life. I threw myself into experiencing what it meant to be a student at UC Berkeley in the early 1990s. From “Naked Guy” nude-ins to student sit-ins over the abolishing of affirmative action, there was plenty of opportunity to witness the digestive and generative power of American culture. It was mind-blowing to see how my peers valued the ability to break down old conventions and create new cultural norms.

I realized that I was willing to move forward without the safety net that was so important to previous generations of my family. For me, America promised personal freedom and mobility. I changed my major from engineering to American studies. Maybe I could become part of this culture in a way my parents and their parents were not able to. My thesis examined high-tech American marketing, a topic that let me combine my understanding of science with my interest in how mass communications shaped societal values.

After graduating in the late 1990s, I went to work at Saatchi & Saatchi, the advertising agency. But when the dot-com bust came with the new millennium, I surveyed my options. I decided to move back to China, which I thought of as home, too. But even though I had been born there, I found myself being treated as an American-born Chinese.

A company I co-founded supplied industrial equipment in Shenzhen. We had a board member who liked to bring me to industry events because of the way I spoke Cantonese, my mother tongue, and Mandarin. My American-accented Chinese was a minor novelty, and lent him a certain kind of prestige at the time for having a Western-educated employee. Even after years of living in Shenzhen, where many different dialects are spoken, my accent revealed my years away from the mother country. It also invited the pejorative moniker juk sing—a Chinese person raised in Western culture, who belonged to neither. But for me, what was important was that I could navigate both cultures, at will.

I returned to San Francisco in 2009 for love, and, as the region’s economy has rebounded, I co-founded Ready State, the advertising agency I run today. Since then, the call of Silicon Valley has brought back many of my peers, who had also moved abroad the decade before. We’re U.S. nationals who now move freely between two countries.

We didn’t stop being immigrants when my great-grandfather came to America, but we members of the later generations can thank him and others for giving us the courage to leap, and the determination to land. I’m part of a generation of Asian immigrants who have a much wider world to live in.

The post When Immigration Isn’t a One-Way Street appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.