Reinventing exhibition spaces in
China
Wu Hung
As a consequence of socio-economic
transformation, new types of exhibition
spaces have appeared in China's cultural
landscape. Wu Hung explores the social
basis of these changes and reviews the
rapidly evolving system which has led to a
great variety of possibilities for presenting
experimental art. As he examines the issues
behind each type of exhibition space, we
witness the interplay of complex social and
artistic relationships and its role in
expanding the influence of experimental
art in a changing society that is China
today. Distinguished professor of Chinese
Art History at the Department of Fine Arts,
University of Chicago since 1994, Wu
Hung holds an M.A. in Art History from
the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing
(1980) and a Ph.D. in Art History and
Anthropology from Harvard University
(1987). Among his books covering the pre-
modern period are: Monumentality in Early
Chinese Art and Architecture, which was
nominated as one of the `the Best Books of
the 1990s' in Artforum, and selected by
Choices as `Outstanding Academic
Publication' in 1996; Three Thousand
Years of Chinese Paintings of which he was
the co-author and for which he received
the Haskin Award in 1998 from the
Association of American Publishers. His
publications on modern and contemporary
art issues include: Remaking Beijing:
Tiananmen Square and the Creation of
Political Space (London, Reaction Books),
and, as editor, A New Beginning: Chinese
Art of 2000 (Beijing, Chinese-art.com). As
chief curator, he is working on the
forthcoming Chinese Art of the 90s: A
Retrospective (The First Guangshou
Documenta Exhibition, Guangzhou
Provincial Museum ± November 2002),
and, as co-curator, on Art of Mu Xin:
Landscape Paintings and Prison Notes, also
a forthcoming exhibition at the Yale
University Art Museum and Smart Museum
of Art, University of Chicago.1
ISSN 1350-0775, Museum International (UNESCO, Paris), No. 211 (Vol. 53, No. 3, 2001)
ß UNESCO 2001
Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF (UK) and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148 (USA)
Current fundamental changes taking place
in contemporary Chinese art are not limited
to art media and styles but also concern
forms and channels of exhibitions. These
concerns reflect a new direction for
Chinese experimental art towards normal-
ization and systematization. Instead of
pursuing a social revolution, independent
curators and avant-garde artists have
become more interested in building up a
social basis that would guarantee regular
exhibitions of experimental art and reduce
interference from the political authorities. A
number of factors in Chinese art have
encouraged this interest: the deepening
globalization of Chinese experimental art;
a crisis in the official exhibition system; the
appearance of new types of exhibition
space as a consequence of China's socio-
economic transformation; and the emerg-
ence of independent curators and their
growing influence on the development of
contemporary art. These factors all interact,
contributing to new kinds of exhibitions
that have been planned to expand existing
exhibition spaces and to forge new
exhibition channels.2
Socio-economic conditions of new
exhibition spaces
The advocates of these new types of
exhibitions believe that China's socio-
economic transformation has created and
continues to create new social sectors and
spaces which can be exploited for
developing experimental art. It is now
possible to develop a new exhibition
system because of these new conditions
in the country.
This transformation started in the 1970s and
1980s, soon after the Cultural Revolution
was over, when the post-Cultural
Revolution generation of Chinese leaders
made a dramatic turn to develop a capitalist
economy. However, it was only in the mid-
1990s when the consequences of this
transformation were fully felt. Numerous
private and joint-venture businesses have
overwhelmed state enterprise; money, not
Communist ideology, has become the
mover of social progress. Major cities such
as Beijing and Shanghai have been
reshaped, showing off their newly gained
global confidence with glimmering shop-
ping complexes and five-star hotels.
Changes have also taken place in people's
lifestyle. While private real estate was
abolished during the Cultural Revolution,
the most popular commercial items these
days are houses and apartments. Holly-
wood films have conquered Chinese
cinemas; fashion shows and beauty
pageants are ranked among the most
popular television programmes. Although
the government still insists on the Com-
munist ideology, in many people's minds, a
final giving way of this ideology is only a
matter of time. Generally speaking, China
in 2001 is no longer a socialist monolith, but
a huge mixture of old and new, feudal and
post-modern, excitement and anxiety. The
country's future will depend on the out-
come of negotiation between conflicting
social forces.
These words also describe the current
situation of art exhibitions in China:
important progress is definitely taking
place, but the government is far from
ready to give up its pre-eminent role in
this area. In China, any art exhibition is
defined first of all by its physical location.
My survey of current exhibition spaces of
experimental art has yielded the following
classification.3
Spaces for public exhibitions (or `open'
exhibitions) of experimental art
Licensed exhibition spaces:
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Wu Hung
• Major national and municipal galleries
(e.g. the National Art Gallery in Beijing,
the Shanghai Art Museum, the He
Xiangning Art Gallery in Shenzhen).
• Smaller galleries affiliated with univer-
sities and art schools (e.g. the Capital
Normal University Art Gallery and the
Contemporary Art Gallery in Beijing).
• Semi-official art galleries (e.g. the Yan-
huang Art Gallery in Beijing, the Art
Gallery of Beijing International Art
Palace, and the Chengdu Contemporary
Art Gallery).
• Versatile exhibition halls in public
spaces (e.g. the Main Hall of the former
Imperial Ancestral Temple in Beijing).
Privately owned galleries and exhibition
halls:
• Commercial galleries (e.g. the Courtyard
Gallery, the Red Gate Gallery, and the
Wan Fung Art Gallery in Beijing).
• Non-commercial galleries and exhibi-
tion halls (e.g. the Upriver Art Gallery in
Chengdu and Taida Art Gallery in
Tianjin).4
Public, non-exhibition spaces:
• Open spaces (e.g. streets, subway
stations, parks, etc.).
• Commercial spaces (e.g. shopping
malls, bars, supermarkets, etc.).
• Mass media and virtual space (e.g.
television, newspapers and websites).
Spaces for private exhibitions (or `closed'
exhibitions) of experimental art
• Private homes.
• Basements of large residential or
commercial buildings.
• `Open studios' and `workshops' spon-
sored by individuals or institutions.
• Embassies and foreign institutions.
20
The main exhibition channels of experi-
mental art in the early 1990s ± the period
immediately after the crackdown on the
June 4th Movement ± were private or
closed shows, whose audience were
mainly artists themselves, their friends,
and foreigners. Terms such as `apartment
art' and `embassy art' were invented to
characterize these shows. Starting from
1993, however, exhibitions began to be
held in various public spaces. Commercial
galleries started to appear, and some of
them supported experimental art projects
that were not aimed at financial return.
Some university galleries became major
sites of experimental art, mainly because
their directors took the role of supporting
this art upon themselves. Sympathizers of
experimental art also emerged in state-run
exhibition entreprises.
Although many `private' or `closed'
exhibitions still exist, greater effort has
been made to organize experimental art
exhibitions in public spaces over the past
three years. Following this general direc-
tion, independent curators may work with
licensed `official' or `semi-official' exhibi-
tion spaces, and try to convert their
directors into supporters of experimental
art. Alternatively, they may devote their
energy to help privately owned exhibition
spaces to develop interesting pro-
grammes. A third strategy is to use `non-
exhibition' spaces to bring experimental
art to the public in a more flexible manner.
Transforming official exhibition
spaces
Traditionally, all official art galleries were
sponsored by the state, and their exhibi-
tions served strong educational purposes.
Although this is still theoretically true
today, in reality most of these public
galleries have to finance their own opera-
ß UNESCO 2001

tions. For this and other purposes they
have to modify their image to appeal to a
wider audience, and, as a result, their
programmes have become increasingly
multi-purpose. Even the National Art Gal-
lery in Beijing, the primary mouthpiece of
the government in the art world, routinely
holds three different kinds of exhibitions,
which are more than often ideologically
self-contradictory. These include: (a)
mainstream exhibitions organized by the
gallery to support the government's
political agenda and to showcase `pro-
gressive' traditions in Chinese art; (b)
imported exhibitions of foreign art,
including avant-garde Western art, as part
of China's cultural exchange with other
countries; and (c) short-term and often
mediocre `rental' exhibitions as the main
source of the gallery's income (the gallery
collects a handsome fee for renting out its
exhibition space and facilities). It is easy
for anyone to question why the gallery
can show Western but not Chinese avant-
garde art, and why it willingly provides
space for an exhibition of obviously poor
quality but not for an exhibition of
genuine artistic experiment.
Unable to respond to these questions but
still insisting on its opportunistic practices,
the National Art Gallery ± and indeed the
whole state-run art exhibition system ± is
rapidly loosing its credibility. It is there-
fore not surprising to find that the position
of the National Art Gallery is not always
shared by other public art galleries.
Important changes are taking place
proving the possibility of bringing
experimental art into official art galleries.
Some of these galleries, especially those
newly established ones and those of the
`semi-official' kind, are more interested in
developing new programmes to make
themselves more cosmopolitan and up-
to-date. The Shanghai Art Museum, for
ß UNESCO 2001
Reinventing Exhibition Spaces in China
ß University of Chicago Media Centre, Audiovisual Department
example, has organized three Bienniales Poster for Exhibition of Recent Words by
in the past six years. The most recent one Zhang Peli and Geng Jianyi, held in the
was put together by an international Diplomatic Missions Restaurant, Beijing,
curatorial team, whose members included 29 May 1991.
two guest curators from France and Japan.
Supported by the municipal government,
the museum placed a strong emphasis on
the relationship between the show and
Shanghai, a city that `represents a specific
and innovative model of modernization, a
regionally defined but globally meaning-
ful form of modernity that can only be
summed up as the ``Shanghai Spirit''.'5
Some independent curators are attracted
by the opportunities to help organize
these kinds of official programmes,
because they see in them the potential
for transforming the official system of art
exhibition from within. In their view,
when they bring experimental art into an
official and semi-official exhibition space,
this art also changes the nature of the
space. For this reason, these curators have
tried to work with large public galleries to
develop exhibitions, although such
projects often require delicate negotiation
and frequent compromises.
Generally speaking, however, national
and municipal galleries are still not ready
to support openly experimental projects
by young Chinese artists. Even when they
21
Wu Hung
hold an exhibition of a more adventurous
nature, they still have to emphasize its
`academic merit' to avoid possible criti-
cism. Compared with these large galleries,
smaller galleries affiliated to universities,
art schools, and other institutions are
under less scrutiny from the government.
Their directors feel less pressure to
maintain a `correct' political attitude, and
are sometimes willing to feature radical
experimental works in their galleries for
either artistic or economic reasons. If a
director is actively involved in promoting
experimental art, his gallery, though small
and little known in the official system, can
play an important role in developing this
art. Examples of such cases include the Art
Gallery of the Capital Normal University
and the Contemporary Gallery of the
Central Art School, which held many
original exhibitions from 1994 to 1996.
On the part of an independent curator, if
he proposes to stage an exhibition for
only a few days and to keep it low in
profile, he is more likely to use such
exhibition spaces.
There is a seeming contradiction in the
world of Chinese experimental art. Beijing
is the unquestionable centre of this art,
because most experimental artists live
there. However, it is also in Beijing where
it is the most difficult for these artists to
show their works publicly. In the capital,
art exhibitions are most carefully watched
over by the authorities. Consequently,
most cancellations of exhibitions have
occurred there. In comparison, it is easier
to hold experimental exhibitions in the
provinces, where censorship is not as
much in evidence as it is in the capital,
and where officials tend to bow to local
interests more than Beijing's demands.
This is true of all sorts of exhibition
spaces, including licensed public galleries
and privately owned or semi-public
galleries.
22
Forging new channels: creating semi-
public and private galleries
The Yanhuang Art Gallery and the
International Art Palace, both in Beijing,
are among the earliest semi-public art
galleries established in China. These
exhibition spaces are funded by private
foundations, but obtain their legal status
of a `public exhibition space' from the
municipal government largely because of
private political connections. In contrast
to state-run art galleries, the semi-public
status of these galleries gives them greater
flexibility to determine their programmes.
Another noticeable example of a semi-
public gallery is the Chengdu Contem-
porary Art Museum founded in September
1999. Large enough to contain a football
field, this gallery is part of an even larger
architectural complex including two
luxury hotels (a five- and a four-star).
The whole project is financed by
Chengdu's municipal government and a
Sino-American joint venture company
called the California Group. The mu-
seum's inauguration coincided with an
enormous exhibition. Called Gate of the
New Century, this exhibition included a
considerable number of installations and
some performance pieces ± content that
would normally be omitted in a main-
stream state-run gallery.
Unlike the Chengdu Contemporary Art
Museum, which is partially funded by the
local government and is thus defined here
as `semi-public', some art galleries are
entirely privately owned. A major change
in China's art world in the past decade has
in fact been the establishment of these
private galleries, which far outnumber
semi-public galleries and provide more
opportunities to exhibit experimental art
outside the official system of art exhibi-
tion. Commercial galleries appeared first
in the early 1990s, and now constitute the
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 Reinventing Exhibition Spaces in China

ß University of Chicago Media Centre, Audiovisual Department

majority of private galleries. Strictly speak-
ing, a commercial gallery is not a licensed
`exhibition space'. But because it is a
licensed `art business', its space can be
used to show art works without additional
official permission. Quite a few owners or
managers of these commercial galleries
take a personal interest in experimental
art, and have supported `non-profit'
exhibitions of installations, video art, and
performances in their galleries. While
mainly offering `milder' types of experi-
mental art to Western collectors, these
galleries occasionally hold bolder shows
organized by guest curators.

Non-commercial, privately funded art

galleries are a more recent phenomenon
in China. These galleries are defined by
their owners as `non-profit', meaning that
they support these galleries and their
operations with their own money, and
that the art works exhibited there are not
for sale. Although most of these owners
are art collectors, the main programme of
these galleries is not to exhibit private art
collections, but to hold a series of tem-
porary shows organized by guest curators.
These galleries thus differ from both
commercial galleries and private mu-
seums, and have a greater capacity to
exhibit more radical types of experimental
art. For this advantage, some independent
curators have been devoting much time
and energy to help establish non- to help attract private donations to support Page from Supermarket exhibition
commercial galleries. art, to found a non-commercial gallery catalogue, showing Shi Yong's miniature
requires originality and dedication. It takes fibreglass sculpture Made in China ±
There is no precedent to this type of a tremendous amount of work for curators Welcome to Shanghai, and Yang
exhibition space in Chinese history. and artists to persuade a company or an Fudong's flip-book, I Love My
Neither is it based on any specific Western entrepreneur to establish such an institu- Motherland, 1999.
model, though its basic concept is tion to promote experimental art. But,
certainly derived from Western art because a gallery like this does not belong
museums and galleries funded by private to the government bureaucracy and is not
foundations and donations. Because controlled by any official department,
China does not have a philanthropic some curators and artists see a new system
tradition of funding public art, and of exhibition spaces based primarily on
because no tax law has been developed this kind of private institution.

ß UNESCO 2001 23
ß Wu Hung, University of Chicago Media Centre, Audiovisual Department Wu Hung
Opening day of the exhibition Home?
held in Shanghai's Star-Moon Home
Furnishing Centre, 8±12 April 2000.
Among the visitors are two policemen.
24
It is unclear at present how many galleries
of this kind exist in China; but three of
them, located in Chengdu, Tianjin and
Shenyang, respectively, have been operat-
ing for the past several years.6 Each of
them has a group of independent curators
and experimental artists as advisers. Some
of the most original exhibitions of
experimental art since 1998 have in fact
taken place in these and other private
galleries. Because the owners of these
galleries are either large companies or rich
businessmen, their influence and relation-
ship with local officials help protect the
exhibitions held in their galleries. In
addition, their connections with local
newspapers and television stations help
turn these exhibitions into public events.
Several shows held from 1999 to 2000 in
the Upriver Art Gallery, for example,
supplied the media with sensational
material and attracted people of different
professions and classes to the exhibitions.
Encouraged by such attention, some
curators take public interaction as their
goal, developing exhibitions around
themes that would arouse public dis-
cussion and debate.
Bringing experimental art to the
public
Another recent effort made by indepen-
dent curators and artists is to hold
experimental art exhibitions in versatile,
non-exhibition spaces. Instead of creating
either official or private regular exhibition
channels, these are `site-specific' exhibi-
tions that serve two interrelated purposes:
they bring experimental art to the public
in a dynamic, guerrilla fashion, and in so
doing transform non-exhibition spaces
into public exhibition spaces. The
organizers of these exhibitions share the
belief that experimental art should be part
of people's lives and should play an active
role in China's socio-economic trans-
formation. Because these curators often
want to demonstrate an unambiguous
relationship between an exhibition and
its social environment, most of these
projects are strongly thematic and centred
on certain public spaces. It is also
common for these curators to ask artists
to submit site-specific works for their
exhibitions, and in this way encourage
them to contextualize their art within a
public space.
This direction is exemplified by a number
of original projects developed in 1999 and
2000. For example, the exhibition
Supermarket was actually held in a
supermarket in the centre of Shanghai;
the fashionable bar Club Vogue in Beijing
became the site of the exhibition Art as
Food; upon the opening of the largest
`furniture city' in Shanghai, customers had
the opportunity to see a huge experi-
mental art exhibition, called Jia?, or
Home?, on the store's enormous fourth
floor. That a majority of these shows used
commercial spaces reflects the curators'
interest in a `mass commercial culture',
which in their view has become a major
moving force in contemporary Chinese
society. While affiliating experimental art
to this culture, their exhibitions also
provided spaces for artists to comment
on this culture, either positively or
critically. Practically speaking, an exhibi-
tion held in a commercial space often
involves a nuanced negotiation between
the curator and the owner or manager of
ß UNESCO 2001

the space. Only because the latter sees
benefit from the proposed exhibition ±
the prospect of bringing in more
customers or gaining the image of being
a `cultured' businessman ± could the
negotiation reach a happy conclusion.
On the part of the curator, however, this
negotiation is approached as an integral
component of the experiment, because
only through this process can a
commercial space be transformed into a
public exhibition space.
I have called these shows `experimental
exhibitions' because their focus of
experimentation has shifted from the
content of the exhibition to the exhibition
itself: its site, form and function.7 Issues
about these aspects of exhibitions loom
large in present-day China because of an
increasing conflict between a rapidly
developing experimental art and a back-
ward, decaying system of art exhibition.
An exhibition of experimental art in
present-day China is therefore always a
complex social and artistic phenomenon.
Instead of simply displaying a group of art
works in a public or private space, it is a
heavily contested social event which
implies the interplay of interconnected
social relationships, offering advocates of
experimental art a powerful means to
expand their influence in a rapidly
changing society. ■ Chendu, the Taida Art Gallery in Tianjin, and
Notes
1. For a fuller discussion of the issues touched
upon in this article, see Wu Hung, Exhibiting
Experimental Art in China, Chicago, The
David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, 2000.
2. For a full discussion of the concept of
`experimental art', see Wu Hung, Transience:
ß UNESCO 2001
Reinventing Exhibition Spaces in China
Chinese Experimental Art at the End of the
Twentieth Century, pp. 13±16, Chicago, The
David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, 1999.
Generally speaking, this art is defined by its
`border' position in relation to four other
major traditions in contemporary art, namely:
(a) official art; (b) academic art; (c) popular
urban visual culture; and (d) an `international'
commercial art. Experimental art is motivated
by the desire to break away from the visual
modes and ideology of these four traditions.
3. I should emphasize that this survey only
covers spaces that have been used for
experimental art exhibitions in recent years.
Thus the varieties listed here do not represent
all types of exibition space in China.
4. It is important to note that the `non-profit'
status of these galleries is defined by their
owners, who fund the galleries and their
activities by using part of their business
income. A gallery in this category usually does
not have an independent licence, and should
be considered a `non-profit' enterprise within
a larger licensed `business for profit' (qiye in
Chinese) sector.
5. Shanghai Art Museum, Announcement of
Shanghai Biennale 2000, Shanghai, Shanghai
Art Museum, 1999.
6. These are the Upriver Art Gallery in
the Dongyu Museum of Fine Arts in
Shenyang. Among them, the Dongyu Museum
focuses more on building up a private
collection of contemporary Chinese art. See
Robert Bernell, `Interview with Wang Yigang,
Managing Director of the Dong Yu Museum
of Fine Arts in Shenyang', Chinese Type
Contemporary Art Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 3,
May/June 1999, pp. 19±22.
7. See Wu Hung, op. cit., pp. 12±17.
25