The new office of the Asia Art Archive (AAA) commands spectacular views of a century of architecture, from the soaring residential high-rises leaning against green mountains to 19th-century colonial architecture and tong lau, or Chinese buildings, dotting the crisscrossing lanes of Sheung Wan.
It's against this contrasting cultural landscape that the AAA has risen. In slightly more than six years, the archive has doubled its library to 2,500sqft, housing more than 22,000 items on Asian contemporary art, including manuscripts, artists' correspondence and a variety of original materials kept in a fire- and humidity-proof special collections room. Among them are type-written articles by art critic Nigel Cameron from the 1980s and invitations to the exhibition China Avant Garde at the China Art Gallery in 1989.
Along the way, the staff have grown from four to 21, although some are part-timers. About half are research positions based in Hong Kong and other Asian cities. Research now extends to India and Pakistan. And closer to home, a project for the 10th anniversary of the handover is underway using material donated by the public.
AAA founder and executive director Claire Hsu sees the role of the organisation as being not only to collect but also to offer different and in-depth readings of Asian contemporary art.
'What we have isn't very old,' she says. 'But it will be around for many generations to come. We're an archive of the present.'
A registered charity, the AAA started with mainly private donations and a one-year grant from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, which accounted for 80 per cent of its entire operating budget. It's now 10-15 per cent of the budget, with a lot of funding coming from corporate donations. One patron established a research grant in 2005, with an award of up to HK$80,000 for projects on Asian contemporary art. A sponsorship in kind that's also integral is the AAA's rent-free premises, thanks to Sino Group and Kerry Properties.
As the organisation grows and relies more on private funding, Hsu says it has had to learn quickly. She says she remembers feeling overwhelmed when the current landlord, Sino Group, offered the archive advertising space on the street level of the building.