Pompidou keen to collaborate on West Kowloon
Paris centre 'shares hub's vision'
Centre Pompidou is seeking opportunities for collaboration on the West Kowloon Cultural District, saying it is far more exciting than setting up a branch of the centre in Shanghai - which is no longer on its agenda.
Alain Seban, president of the leading contemporary art and cultural centre in Paris, told the South China Morning Post he had privately met the arts hub authority's chairman, Chief Secretary Henry Tang Ying-yen, and board member Victor Lo Chung-wing, who will steer the development of the museum at the arts hub in the next two years.
The meeting took place while he was in town for the Business of Design Week.
Mr Seban said discussion on the potential collaboration would be a continuing process, and he had been brainstorming and exchanging ideas with the arts hub's board members.
'We are more than willing to share our expertise in managing museums, training of staff and curators, and programming,' said Mr Seban, who was appointed president of Centre Pompidou last year.
He said the discussions had yet to cover collection-sharing but that Centre Pompidou could help shape the strategic vision of the arts hub's flagship museum, M+ - a contemporary cultural institution focusing on visual culture.
He believed it was important for the arts hub's management to think of the kind of collection needed, how to put it together and what kind of curators and staff the hub would need.
In 2005, before the 'single-developer model' for West Kowloon was scrapped by the Executive Council, Centre Pompidou was a partner of the Dynamic Star consortium - a joint venture of Cheung Kong (Holdings) and Sun Hung Kai Properties - bidding to run the arts hub.
In 2006 Pompidou said it was going to open a branch in Shanghai, but Mr Seban said that plan no longer existed.
'I'd be far more excited to [explore] a partnership with an institution like M+, which seems to share the core vision that we do believe in as an institution,' Mr Seban said.
'I think it's far more exciting than trying to create some kind of branch for Pompidou.
'Right now ... we are not really pushing forward to open a subsidiary,' he said, while adding that Pompidou was busy with a branch in eastern France, expected to open at the end of next year.
Mr Seban said the discussion on a Pompidou Shanghai branch began at a local level and had not reached the central level. Then, the people they had been talking to in Shanghai had changed and the centre had not pursued the project further.
'I'm not prepared to engage another collection into another subsidiary. This is not on the agenda.'
Mr Seban said he believed there was great potential for M+ and the arts hub because of their centralised location in Asia and connection with the Chinese and the Asian art scene. 'But it has got to do with good curators, good programmes and great vision.'
