Wake-up call for China’s private art museums as property-market slump claims top Guangzhou institution

The closure of the Guangdong Times Museum highlights the danger of private art museums being financially dependent on one company

Other factors, such as an increasingly challenging political environment, threaten China’s love affair with private museums, which numbered around 1,860 in 2021

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The Guangdong Times Museum in Guangzhou, a private art museum in China’s Guangdong province, announced in August that it was suspending all physical programmes due to cutbacks by its backer, Times Property. Photo: Guangdong Times Museum

Published: 5:15pm, 24 Aug 2022Updated: 6:26pm, 24 Aug 2022

A powerhouse of southern China’s contemporary art scene is closing its “starchitect”-designed exhibition space and suspending most activities indefinitely as it falls victim to the country’s worst property-market slump since the global financial crisis.

The Guangdong Times Museum made the announcement on August 18, less than two months after the surprise closure of its four-year-old branch in Berlin, Germany.

“Losing such a professionally run institution would be traumatic for Guangzhou’s art circle. I really hope that it will find a way to survive,” says Bubu Liu, founder of the local art collective Boloho.

The Guangdong Times Museum is owned by Hong Kong-listed developer Times China, a company based in Guangzhou and headed by the billionaire Shum Chiu-hung.

The view from the Guangdong Times Museum’s 19-floor exhibition gallery. Photo: Guangdong Times Museum

The museum’s origin can be traced back to 2003 when Times China helped fund a temporary branch of the state-run Guangdong Museum of Art, set up on the site of one of its residential projects in the largely rural, northern fringe of the city.