The Hong Kong Palace Museum (HKPM) opened to the public in the West Kowloon Cultural District in July 2022. Covering an area of 13,000 square metres, the museum is a seven-storey building designed by Hong Kong-based Rocco Design Architects Associates.
Jointly curated by the Hong Kong Palace Museum and Beijing’s Palace Museum, the opening exhibitions showcase 914 treasures in rotation from the Forbidden City. These are shown alongside 100 artefacts on loan from local museums and cultural institutions. There are also 13 objects on loan from the Louvre in Paris.
Dr Louis Ng became the museum director of the Hong Kong Palace Museum in August 2019. He is responsible for developing the museum’s strategic vision, exhibitions and programming, as well as managing its collections, operations, and educational and audience-building strategies. Dr Ng is a seasoned museum professional, historian and arts administrator. He has over 30 years of experience in museum planning and management.
Before joining WKCDA, Dr Ng was deputy director of the Leisure and Cultural Services Department, HKSAR Government. Here, he oversaw the department’s museums, performance arts venues, visual arts centres and libraries.
Creating the Hong Kong Palace Museum
“Beijing’s Palace Museum and the West Kowloon Cultural Authority together formed the intention of creating a Palace Museum in Hong Kong in 2015,” he tells blooloop:
“We are not a branch of the Beijing Palace Museum,” he clarifies. “We are entirely independent, and have our own management and curatorial team. Nevertheless, we wanted to bring the Palace Museum culture to Hong Kong. We wanted to make use of their reach and cultural resources to reach out to an international audience.”
From the perspective of the Palace Museum in Beijing, he adds:
“There were two considerations. Firstly, over the past 10 years, there have been many Palace Museum exhibitions in Hong Kong, in collaboration with local museums. The curatorship we adopted at that time was innovative and so provided a new and engaging perspective, in terms of interpreting their project. They liked the way we created a show. They also wanted to make use of our network and our global vision, which could help them to have more international collaborations with overseas museums and institutions.”
With these motivations in place and an ideal piece of land identified, the funding support was then obtained. The project was completed in an incredible five years.
Widening the museum’s mission
Traditionally, museums have existed primarily to preserve artefacts, and to educate:
“We have widened that function to embrace equality, diversity, and inclusion,” he comments. “It is important that visitors from very different backgrounds find the museum experience to be engaging. We are also very concerned about how to promote social inclusion in the museum, especially for disabled visitors.”
With this in mind, the museum offers a range of barrier-free facilities and accessibility services. This means that visitors of all abilities and ages can both enjoy and engage with the exhibitions.
Wheelchair-accessible service desks afford access to induction loops allowing direct transmission to hearing aids. Accessible parking is also available in the car park, and wheelchair-accessible lifts in the museum building connect all floors. Every lift has an audio announcement system and braille signage. There are accessible toilets on all floors with foldable nursing beds available in all of them. Unisex toilets are also available, as are manual wheelchairs and baby buggies. Visitors can borrow these for use within the building.
Tactile guide paths feature throughout the museum, connecting the entrances, service desks and accessible lifts, as well as escalators and accessible toilets. Visitors with trained guide dogs are welcome in all galleries and facilities. Induction loop systems are also installed at various locations throughout the museum.
“We have worked with disabled people to develop programmes,” Dr Ng explains. “In terms of the under-privileged and under-served communities, we also felt it was important to offer free access.”
Opening exhibitions at Hong Kong Palace Museum
The museum’s primary source of revenue is its admission fees, contributing to 50 per cent of its total income. Sponsorship accounts for 40 per cent of the income, while the rest comes from commercial ventures such as venue hires.
In terms of the opening exhibitions, Dr Ng says:
“The museum presents the finest objects from the Palace Museum and other important cultural institutions from around the world. Over 900 objects from the Palace Museum’s collection were carefully selected for display in the museum’s opening exhibitions, on diverse themes including architectural art, court life, craftsmanship, and collections of bronzes, ceramics, paintings, and calligraphy.
“A loan of this size is unprecedented in the history of the Palace Museum. It signifies the strategic partnership between the two institutions.”
The museum displays these loans across nine galleries. Five host thematic exhibitions, which introduce aspects of the history and culture of the Forbidden City. Two other galleries feature art collections in Hong Kong as well as multimedia projects. Meanwhile, the last two galleries showcase special exhibitions organised by the museum or presented in partnership with other institutions, such as the Louvre in Paris.
See also: Inside M+: Asia’s first global museum of contemporary visual culture
Nurturing local talent
Dr Ng adds:
“One thing I felt was important was to nurture new local talent and to show the new responding to the old. So, we engaged six artists to create some multimedia exhibits in dialogue with the past museum objects.”
The result was ‘No Boundaries: Reinterpreting the Palace Museum Culture’. This presented six local multi-media and interdisciplinary artists’ new works that reinterpret the art and culture of the Forbidden City from a fresh perspective.
A large quantity of the precious objects on display originates from the Forbidden City in the Ming and Qing dynasties. Three thematic exhibitions — ‘Entering the Forbidden City: Architecture, Collection, and Heritage’, ‘From Dawn to Dusk: Life in the Forbidden City’ and ‘Encountering the Majestic: Portraits of Qing Emperors and Empresses’ — invite you to catch a glimpse at the court life during the Ming and Qing dynasties.
Two other exhibitions, ‘Clay to Treasure: Ceramics from the Palace Museum Collection’ and ‘The Quest for Originality: Contemporary Design and Traditional Craft in Dialogue’, display historical artefacts and handicrafts respectively and allow visitors to discover the beauty of Chinese handicrafts from different perspectives.
The opening exhibitions also featured, in addition to ‘No Boundaries’, another Hong Kong-themed gallery. ‘Private to Public: The History of Chinese Art Collecting in Hong Kong’ surveys over a century of Chinese art collecting in the city.
Public engagement at Hong Kong Palace Museum
“Regarding our learning and public engagement program,” he adds, “We have a programme called Hong Kong Palace Museum Showtime.”
Sponsored by the Bank of China (Hong Kong) Limited, HKPM SHOWTIME! is presented in collaboration with top-tier performing arts organisations and artists, to introduce the HKPM to new audiences.
Through music, dance, theatre, and more, the performances draw on the richness of Chinese art, history, and the dialogue between different cultures.
“Sometimes we might book a professional group, like the Hong Kong Philharmonic orchestra, or Chinese orchestra dance company. At other times, it might be something much less serious, with a lot of audience engagement. It’s a one-hour performance, so very informal. And then the others can engage with the audience.”
He also references the concept of placemaking:
“In working alongside the community, we seek to share the exploration, vision, and values of the place. We want the decisions here to be made not just by the curators, but by the community. We want to move away from formality and reimagine the definition of a museum so that there is a discourse between the curators and the audience.
“It is important to demonstrate, through the programmes we present – we’d like to take dance into schools to interpret museum objects, for example – that we are not only the custodians of our heritage but can bring a modern context to the past.
“This can only work in partnership with the community, and also with other cultural institutions.”
Connecting with the community
The museum, he explains, is connecting to the community, encouraging an interactive conversation. It is dynamic, and forward-looking, drawing in new audiences as well as reaching under-served communities:
“That’s something we need to do more,” Dr Ng says:
“We still need to do more to reach outside that traditional museum-going public, to encourage a younger and more diverse visitorship. The museum is, at heart, a cultural resource that belongs to the community of Hong Kong.”
“As a dynamic platform, it will inspire community engagement and foster dialogue and partnerships, as well as promoting creativity and interdisciplinary collaboration.”
A digital strategy is one way of reaching a younger demographic.
“Digital culture and technology are changing the way we experience and consume content, as well as how we interact with one another. As a forward-looking museum, the HKPM has a commitment to collaborating closely with artists, educators, designers, and the creative and technology sectors to open up new ways of learning and experiencing art and culture.”
Immersive storytelling
The museum will do this in a variety of ways, cultivating immersive storytelling, creating a digitally embedded museum environment, and also engaging with digital content.
“Most importantly, we want to engage young people in creative courses. We want to ensure there are hands-on activities for them,” he adds:
“We want to work with university professors and students to curate some programs and to work with high school students. So much talent and creativity can be brought to bear, in terms of, for instance, encouraging students to create their own museum pieces using new technologies – creating a 3-D museum with AR, or reimagining a historical painting as an animation. In the museum, we have a learning centre, the Palace Academy, where we have installed a 20-metre digital wall.”
At 1,600 square metres, the Palace Academy is the largest dedicated museum learning space in Hong Kong. It offers a wide range of educational activities for visitors.
Through youth engagement and long-term strategic partnerships with local schools and the educational community, the Palace Academy facilitates students’ interest in Chinese art, culture, and history.
Interactive learning at Hong Kong Palace Museum
Dr Ng is also keen to move away from a one-way, didactic approach. He has, therefore, instigated an interactive approach to learning, complete with a hands-on handling collection:
“The idea is to have real art pieces or artefacts that students can touch, feel, and learn. They are forging a connection with the history of the artwork through touching. It’s a challenging idea because the approach for museums has been ‘don’t touch’ for so long. So, I plan to also acquire some less valuable pieces from collectors in Hong Kong. We can then send these out to schools as part of a touchable program.”
Commenting on how museums, by facilitating learning about the past, can also help inform our vision of the future, he says:
“Presenting the truth of the past objectively is very important. The second part of that concerns providing meaning. Here, I think, we need to let the audience reach the meanings themselves. As historians, we can provide several different views and perspectives. They can think, analyse, comment, and form their own views.”
Looking ahead
Going forward, the HKPM will continue to strengthen its connections with Chinese museums and audiences, establishing partnerships with major museums. Cultural shared resources will be drawn on to help young people better understand Chinese history and culture.
As well as exploring the developmental opportunities of the Guangdong – Hong Kong – Macau Greater Bay Area and its significant market potential, the museum will continue working to connect Chinese culture with a global audience, forging strategic cultural partnerships, travelling exhibitions on world civilisations, collaborative research and professional training programmes.
HKPM will continue to seek sponsorship to support the distribution of 120,000 admission tickets to underprivileged groups. It will be joining with corporates, social welfare organisations and district groups to arrange visits for disadvantaged communities and students.
Entering its second year of operations, the Hong Kong Palace Museum (HKPM) will be refreshing its existing thematic exhibitions. It will also be presenting a range of new special exhibitions. Highlights include “Gazing at Sanxingdui: New Archaeological Discoveries in Sichuan”. This will open on 27 September. There is also a special exhibition co-organised with the National Gallery, London, opening in November.
Collaborating with leading institutions around the world
As the museum refreshes its exhibitions, highlights will include a new exhibition on Ancient Paintings co-organised with the Palace Museum. There will be a new exhibition showcasing some of the best from HKPM’s own collections. Plus, the museum will host a new multimedia art exhibition by Hong Kong artists that explores ancient Chinese garden art. These new exhibitions will reflect the profound and far-reaching influence of traditional Chinese culture and art from multiple perspectives.
Dr Ng comments:
“As the HKPM enters its second year of operation, our focus will be on collaborating with leading global cultural institutions. We want to curate the finest high-quality exhibitions. And we want to promote the inheritance of Chinese culture and cultural exchanges between China and the world.”
All images kind courtesy of Hong Kong Palace Museum
