How Hong Kong became Asia’s artistic capital

By Anna Hart

June 21, 2024

Twenty-first century Hong Kong is a creative cocktail of grassroots artist-run collectives, big-hitter cultural institutions and splashy international art fairs

Creative spirit

Hong Kong is one of the world’s most exciting destinations for art-lovers right now. This frenetic super-city is currently buoyed up following a riotously successful Art Month. March saw Art Basel Hong Kong scale up to its pre-pandemic proportions, alongside homegrown emerging-artist-oriented Art Central. And the pivotal Hong Kong International Cultural Summit brought top-tier global and local curators together to explore how local commercial galleries can work with the public sector to bring ambitious artistic programmes to homegrown and international art-lovers. Artist-run spaces such as Asia Art Archive, Cattle Depot Artist Village and Para Site are also on the radar of international visitors, as are the Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile (CHAT) in the New Territories and Tai Kwun on Hong Kong Island. In the heart of Central, towering complex H Queen’s houses galleries including Whitestone, Hauser & Wirth and Ora-Ora across eight floors. The city has always been a culinary attraction and ideal city break material for culture buffs. But today Hong Kong is more magnetic than ever before, bringing people from all over the world together through the arts.

Image credit: Art Basel Hong Kong

M+

Opened in November 2021 in a striking complex designed by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, M+ Collections focuses on 20th- and 21st-century creativity, including moving image, visual art, design and architecture. As Asia’s first global museum of contemporary visual culture, M+ Collections landed in the international art landscape with immediate comparison to London’s Tate Modern, New York’s MoMA and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and cemented West Kowloon’s reputation as Asia’s art epicentre. Overlooking Victoria Harbour, it comprises 33 galleries displaying collections from Hong Kong, Greater China and other locations within Asia, plus a futuristic tower façade featuring an LED system to display commissioned works. The roof garden offers some of the best views of that iconic Hong Kong skyline.

Image credit: Herzog & de Meuron

K11 MUSEA

Also situated at the harbourfront, this gleaming, 1.2-million-square-foot space intentionally blurs the lines between shopping mall, art gallery and cultural hub. With genuinely innovative and immersive exhibits, high-concept cafés, edible art projects and a nature park (eight storeys high), K11 MUSEA is a cornerstone of the Victoria Dockside development. Over 50,000sqft of vertical garden carpets K11 MUSEA;s interiors and exterior, and more delicate ferns and mosses are nurtured inside visually striking vivariums. But the complex’s commitment to art-adapted-for-public-use is perhaps best demonstrated by the two playgrounds designed by Danish firm Monstrum, with the ground-floor, indoor Donut Playhouse featuring a three-storey slide and 33ft wooden child sculpture plus an interactive digital area, while the Peacock Playground outside on the seventh floor has a dazzling 30ft peacock construction with a tubular slide. Children will go nuts.

West Kowloon Cultural District

As well as K11 MUSEA and M+ Collections, the wider West Kowloon area is a triumph of culture-forward urban regeneration. One of the largest and most ambitious enrichment projects in the world, the goal was to develop a lively new cultural quarter on 40 hectares of reclaimed land, encompassing theatres, performance spaces and museums. Eventually, it will offer 23 hectares of public open space, but this old harbourfront district is already a vibrant epicentre with the dazzling Hong Kong Palace Museum, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Freespace, Xiqu Centre, Victoria Dockside and the Art Park.

Asia Society Hong Kong Center

This much-loved arts non-profit occupies a space in a former explosives and ammunition production facility of the old Victoria Barracks, poetically now transformed into a multi-disciplinary arts centre, intellectual hub and heritage site. Reimagined by New York-based architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien with a remit of conservation and adaptive reuse, the site opened in 2012 and now offers a fantastic array of lectures, performances, film screenings, exhibitions and heritage tours. “This is a horizontal building in a vertical city,” explains Tsein. The sculptural collection is a highlight, as are the surrounding gardens.

Check in at The Landmark Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong or Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong

About the Author

Anna Hart

Belfast-born Anna Hart is an international culture and travel writer, with a specialist interest in social trends, migration patterns and urban culture. An award-winning author and documentary director, she contributes regularly to The New York Times. Gourmet Traveller Australia, The Times, The Guardian and Conde Nast Traveller. Anna is currently working on her second book, Homes, about freedom of movement.