No amount of urging will get Daisy Wang Yiyou, deputy director of the new Hong Kong Palace Museum, to reveal anything about the 900 artworks and antiques coming from the Palace Museum, in Beijing’s Forbidden City. Wang is one of only a few who know what the exhibits are going to be, when they will arrive, where they are now and how the museum in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District can install everything in time for its planned July opening. We have been told that next month, when the press are taken around the finished building with Rocco Yim Sen-kee , they will only see empty display cases. Yim is the architect behind the building beside Victoria Harbour, whose design is said to invoke the architectural and cultural essence of its Beijing namesake. This late, mad dash to the finish line has to do with keeping irreplaceable and important historical artefacts out of harm’s way, among which will be an unknown number of those designated top “grade 1” national treasures . According to Wang, that involves last-minute checks on the condition not just of the candidates for shipment to Hong Kong but climate control, the suitability of the display cases (made by Italian firm Goppion) and security arrangements. The lead time, too, for the museum – first announced in 2016 by Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, then Hong Kong’s No 2 official – has been unprecedented, Wang says. “To build a building, select the artworks, develop the educational materials and programmes [within that time frame] is a really big constraint.” Tale of two museums: How arts hub design could have been more inclusive The political impetus behind the project has been clear from the start. In 2017, when Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Hong Kong to witness Lam’s swearing in as chief executive , he bemoaned the absence from the city of education and propaganda about national history and culture – something Beijing believes contributed to the anti-government protests in Hong Kong in 2019 . On the same trip, Xi attended the signing ceremony for long-term collaborations between the Beijing and Hong Kong Palace Museums. Unlike other parts of the West Kowloon Cultural District that involved public consultation and architectural competitions, the HK$3.5 billion (US$450 million) Hong Kong Palace Museum was announced as a fait accompli – something that had already been decided. The museum, wholly bankrolled by the Hong Kong Jockey Club (Hong Kong’s largest single taxpayer and one of the city’s major employers), was able to bypass the Legislative Council’s finance committee and its scrutiny of publicly funded projects. Despite widespread criticism over the lack of transparency and due process, the museum’s construction happened at a pace that put other parts of the district, such as the oft-delayed M+ museum , to shame. Now, except for the exhibits, it is ready to meet the hard deadline of July 1, 2022 – the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to China . Xi is said to be coming to Hong Kong to mark the occasion, with the museum opening acting as a backdrop to the city’s new era of integration with mainland China. Before Hong Kong, Wang was the curator of Chinese and East Asian Art at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem in the US state of Massachusetts. You might think running a museum in Hong Kong would be a very different experience, but Wang says that is not the case at all. “What I learned in the US is that everyone is the same,” she says. It doesn’t matter if it is a group of visitors from Chinatown or Americans who have no knowledge of China and its culture, “they want relevance, they want education for their kids”. Museums are, Wang says, essentially educational institutions. This is why the Hong Kong Palace Museum is in the process of working with the city’s Education Bureau and local schools to help educate young people. “Even in mainland China, where most people would probably know some basic historical facts from high school, if you ask them how many emperors there were in the Qing dynasty [1644-1912], most wouldn’t know. “So here in Hong Kong, my approach is to look at the basic questions and look at shared humanity. We study past court exhibitions and look for new threads that resonate with everybody.” Wang never imagined that she would get to work so closely with the Palace Museum, let alone help build a new one in Hong Kong. The daughter of a photojournalist and raised in the historic city of Yueyang in Hunan province, Wang, who studied political science and English literature at university, had no interest in museum work at first. She left China to do a PhD in art history at Ohio University in the States. “It was totally serendipitous,” says Wang. “The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston [in Massachusetts] gave me my first job. I loved it and it convinced me to be a museum professional. I loved all the art treasures – but also the fact a museum is a place to bring everybody together.” The reason she was keen to work with the Beijing Palace Museum – and probably why she was deemed suitable for the role at the Hong Kong museum – was a 2018 exhibition that she co-curated at the Peabody Essex Museum. “Empresses of China’s Forbidden City” was praised for bringing the roles of women in the royal household to the fore and for introducing the American public to 120 exquisite objects including imperial portraits, religious artefacts, jewellery and robes. “A hundred and twenty is the usual cut-off number for loans,” she explains. “[In Hong Kong,] we are looking at multiples of that number. The Palace Museum has never allowed so many pieces to leave Beijing before, and there are a lot of logistics issues we have to conquer.” Wang spent five years (the typical pace at which things are done in museums) preparing for the Peabody exhibition, staying for months in Beijing and working closely with Palace Museum experts. “I felt very melancholic about saying goodbye to the Forbidden City and my friends. Then I got this opportunity. I couldn’t believe it. I love Hong Kong, and I love the Palace Museum. So what could be better?” One thing could certainly have made things better – the absence of a pandemic. Wang had planned to commute between Hong Kong and Beijing to visit the Forbidden City and its collection of 1.8 million items. Instead, the Hong Kong team had to rely on high-quality images sent from Beijing to make its selection for the exhibitions. That takes us back to the exhibits and what we do – and don’t – know. We know the themes of the opening exhibitions in the nine galleries. One will have about 100 paintings from the Palace Museum shown in several rotations, with a focus on the calligraphic inscriptions on the scrolls. Another will be dedicated to the artistic representation of horses. Most of the galleries will feature some form of cultural and temporal interchange. For example, Hong Kong artist Stanley Wong Ping-pui (also known as Another Mountain Man) is curating an exhibition whose theme is seeing Chinese traditional paintings and artefacts through the lens of today’s Hong Kong. There will also be a major focus on conservation. Wang’s research for the Peabody exhibition in 2018 brought on a bout of filial guilt after she found out that the Emperor Qianlong (“the busiest man on the planet at that time”) visited his mother every single morning. “I was deeply touched by that. I immediately sent a WeChat [message] to my mum in Hunan. I felt so bad about not spending more time with my parents,” she says. These days, despite the frenetic preparations for the opening, Wang sees her parents a lot more, as they moved to Hong Kong to be with her. This is partly because she plans to stay in her new home for a while. “When I took the job, I basically signed a marriage certificate with the museum. I still cannot believe I’m here working at the Hong Kong Palace Museum. It’s not just a dream job. It is beyond my [wildest] dreams.”