HSBC teams up with M+ museum to help promote arts and culture in Hong Kong and beyond
- The bank will become Lead Sponsor of the city’s visual culture museum in West Kowloon Cultural District from November
- Luanne Lim, chief executive, Hong Kong at HSBC, says the partnership is part of its ‘Open to Art’ initiative, which involves sponsorship of M+’s Special Exhibitions
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There is little doubt about the intrinsic value of the arts and culture to society – which enrich our daily lives through access to the worlds of literature, theatre, dance, film, music, art and design, and collective resources including museums, galleries and libraries.
Such modes of creative expression can have a wide-ranging positive impact not only on our emotional, physical and psychological well-being and education, but also our economy, through businesses working in these fields creating jobs, developing skills and attracting visitors.
For example, the arts industry and culture was worth an estimated £10.9 billion to the United Kingdom economy in 2019, according to a report titled “The Cultural Cities Enquiry”, which examined how smart investment in cultural activities could enrich the UK’s cities and their people.
In Hong Kong, HSBC, the city’s largest bank, has long recognised the importance of the arts and culture in society. It has teamed up with M+, the city’s museum of visual culture, to help promote their development in the city and across Asia. It will become the museum’s first Lead Sponsor from November 1.
“Arts and culture are key components of quality of life, and important contributors to Hong Kong’s reputation as an international city,” Luanne Lim, chief executive, Hong Kong at HSBC, says.
“We want to help encourage greater appreciation of art and culture – to make it more accessible to everyone. I am very excited that we have found a like-minded partner in M+, an institution that shares our vision of connecting Hong Kong to the world and the world to Hong Kong.”
M+, Asia’s first global museum of contemporary visual culture – located in the West Kowloon Cultural District, a vibrant cultural quarter beside Victoria Harbour – is dedicated to collecting, exhibiting, and interpreting visual art, design and architecture and the moving image.
The museum hopes to establish itself as one of the leading international cultural institutions. The exhibitions at M+ already reflect Hong Kong’s unique East-meets-West cultural history.
Works drawn from the M+ Collections – from Hong Kong, Greater China, Asia and beyond – as well as new commissions are presented at M+’s opening exhibitions across the museum’s galleries and other display spaces.
Invigorate city’s arts scene
The new partnership forms part of HSBC’s “Open to Art” initiative. “HSBC and M+ share a common vision of bringing extraordinary contemporary art and culture experiences to the Hong Kong public,” Lim says.
“From our banknotes to our iconic building in Central, HSBC is very much part of Hong Kong’s visual culture. I was delighted to see HSBC inspired artworks on display at the museum.”
The partnership will also see the bank sponsor M+’s Special Exhibitions, tours for social service organisations and access groups, as well as M+ Family Day, which is designed to promote learning for visitors of all ages.
HSBC is also serving as Lead Sponsor of M+’s first Special Exhibition, “Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now” – the largest retrospective of the renowned Japanese artist to be staged in Asia outside Japan, which opens as the museum marks its first anniversary.
It will feature more than 200 works, including paintings, installations, sculptures, drawings, collages, moving images and archival materials selected from museums and private collections, the M+ Collection, her own collection and others in Asia, Europe and the United States, plus three new creations, including an immersive environment and a large-scale installation.
“HSBC is very excited to be able to bring such a prestigious, world-class event to Hong Kong, to show the world Hong Kong at its best: Hong Kong is open for business, open to art,” Lim says.
“Our partnership with M+ represents an important milestone, reflecting HSBC’s continuous support to the arts and culture community and the great ambitions HSBC has for the future.”
Promoting work of local artists
A deeply rooted financial institution such as HSBC can also help promote local arts and cultural development, she says. For example, the bank was the title sponsor of this year’s K11 NFT exhibition at the Victoria Dockside art and cultural district’s K11 MUSEA – a cutting edge cultural-retail destination, which specialises in immersive visitor experiences.
The April to June event – touted as one of Hong Kong’s most diverse exhibitions of NFTs, or non-fungible tokens – saw the interior of K11 MUSEA atrium’s glass-panelled Gold Ball transformed into a display zone featuring a selection of NFT artworks.
Hi-tech panels within the Gold Ball showed the story of HSBC’s pioneering work in both the digital and art-finance worlds, as well as two artworks, The Art of Progress by acclaimed Hong Kong digital artist Victor Wong and the digitalised Thread of Life. The latter was inspired by a Chinese silk tapestry that local merchants gave to HSBC’s chief manager Sir Thomas Jackson upon his retirement in 1902.
HSBC Archives in Hong Kong, London, New York and Paris together form one of the most international corporate collections in the world. Its gallery in Hong Kong, which is accessible to the public by appointment for research and educational purposes, features a huge collection of historic documents, photographs, drawings and banknotes reflecting the different facets of Hong Kong.
Lim says HSBC also aims to work closely with the art community to give greater exposure to local artists through the HSBC Metaverse Gallery – a “credible and influential platform”, which they can use to exhibit their work.
