Guggenheim makes commission statement

Chinese contemporary art has become fashionable at auction houses around the world, where prices for works by established artists such as Zhang Xiaogang can fetch more than HK$20 million. But outside of the art cognoscenti, few mainstream art viewers are aware of the boom in creativity that has been taking place on the mainland since Wang Guangyi become famous with his pop art take on Cultural Revolution propaganda in the early 1990s.

Although casual exhibition-goers in the West may be familiar with artist Ai Weiwei, who had a high-profile exhibition at London's Tate Modern in 2010, the general view of Chinese art is still traditional: scroll paintings, calligraphy, pottery and the like.

An estimated US$10 million grant from the Hong Kong-based Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation to the Guggenheim Museum in New York, announced on Tuesday, may start to initiate a change and bring visitors to the museum up to date with the artistic developments in China.

Although the Guggenheim did not reveal the amount, the museum described it as the "largest grant ever given to a US museum" . It will be used to commission new works from Chinese artists: the works will show at the Guggenheim in New York and then enter the museum's permanent collection. The grant also enables the museum to hire a curator of Chinese art, Dr Thomas J. Berghuis, who will commission the pieces.

The idea of the project, both the Guggenheim and the Robert H.N. Ho Foundation agree, is to provide a platform for Chinese contemporary art that will allow modern works to be seen by mass audiences in the West, rather than just critics, auctioneers and collectors.

Located on Fifth Avenue, on New York's so-called Museum Mile, the Guggenheim attracts a audience of art lovers and tourists, both local and international. Both sides hope that the commissions will push new art from China further into the mainstream.