[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/IMG_1539-e1774368609908.jpeg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWe are\u00a0witnessing\u00a0growing geopolitical complexity around the world. In times like\u00a0these, culture matters more than ever. Culture transcends borders,\u201d said Hong Kong\u2019s Secretary for Culture, Sports and Tourism,\u00a0Rosanna Law, at the opening ceremony of this\u00a0year\u2019s Hong Kong International Cultural Summit on Monday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe remark offered\u00a0one of\u00a0the\u00a0summit\u2019s\u00a0few,\u00a0curated\u00a0nods to\u00a0the destabilizing effects of the spiraling U.S.\u2013Israel\u2013Iran war on global transport and energy flows.\u00a0But the\u00a0implication\u00a0landed cleanly: the world is reorganizing\u2014and with it, the distribution of cultural influence.\u00a0Panels and policy discussions painted a picture of a city weighing its next steps.\u00a0Over decades, Hong Kong has\u00a0established\u00a0its role as a gateway between China and the West; now,\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0engineering a self-sufficient\u00a0arts and cultural\u00a0engine that serves first its residents and then its near\u00a0and dear\u00a0in the region.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe 2026 summit, titled\u00a0A New Era: Reimagining Community Through the Arts<\/em>, unfolded across the M+ museum and the Hong Kong Museum of Art. In his remarks, WKCDA Board\u00a0chairman\u00a0Bernard Chan\u00a0said the event arrives \u201cat a moment when the city is firmly reestablishing itself as an international cultural center,\u201d while \u201cingraining\u201d arts and culture into daily\u00a0Hong Kong\u00a0life. To those ends, Chaw announced that a slate of memoranda had been signed this week between Hong Kong, Mainland China, and European and regional institutions, covering professional training, performance, education, and collection sharing\u2014from the Misk Art Institute in Saudi Arabia to the Czech Academy of Visual Arts and London\u2019s Sadler\u2019s Wells\u00a0Theatre.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tHe stressed that local investment was paying off\u2014nearly half of all museum visitors are residents\u2014and hinted that\u00a0greater\u00a0change is just around the corner: the West Kowloon Performing Arts Center is set to open next year, followed by the West Kowloon Academy, a planned incubator for arts professionals.\u00a0\u201cLater this month, we will finalize the details of our collaboration with Art Basel for the next five years,\u201d he added, highlighting the sustained ambition required to bring the partnership to fruition.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tFerried from harbor to harbor, the glowing city ribbon of Hong Kong unfurls ahead; it teems with thousands of visitors for its stalwart art month, milling from museum to museum\u2014the unenlightened might assume the city\u2019s work is done.\u00a0But as Adrian Ellis, chair of the Global Cultural Districts Network, reminded one panel,\u00a0only the savviest\u00a0institutions\u00a0survive\u00a0\u201cwhat comes after success.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tEllis was one of 30 speakers from 14 countries who offered guidance, drawing on their own experience, to Hong Kong\u2019s cultural leaders on the ongoing challenges of funding and engagement\u2014perennial concerns for any arts and cultural venue, now compounded by 21st-century shifts in patronage.\u00a0Elaine Bedell, chief executive of London\u2019s Southbank Centre, which marks its 75th anniversary, said on the same panel as Ellis that she and her team are \u201cincreasingly\u201d having to \u201cjustify\u201d the funding they receive from the UK government. \u201cIn the past\u2026 it was given that public money would come, and it is no longer a given,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThey spoke on the panel,\u00a0Multi-Disciplinary Arts Districts in the 21st Century\u2014Challenges and Opportunities.\u00a0<\/em>As the name suggests, cultural districts have\u00a0emerged\u00a0as one solution to the modern challenge of\u00a0maintaining\u00a0public interest in the arts. Hong Kong\u2019s West Kowloon now joins these ranks.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tBedell and Ellis were joined by Mari\u00ebt Westermann, director and CEO of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation\u2014a pioneer of the museum-brand model\u2014and Douglas Gautier, CEO of the Royal Arts Complex in Saudi Arabia, a quintessentially Gulf project\u00a0in terms of the scale and speed with which it is being conceived and built.\u00a0Westermann, as steward of the Guggenheim\u2019s multi-continental enterprise,\u00a0spoke of the Bilbao Effect: the oft-pursued, never\u00a0quite\u00a0replicated success story of their first branch,\u00a0Guggenheim Bilbao.\u00a0Since opening in 1997, Guggenheim Bilbao\u00a0has\u00a0contributed\u00a0hundreds of thousands of euros\u00a0to\u00a0the\u00a0Basque\u00a0region\u2019s GDP.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cCultural districts can be tremendous drivers of economic and social development, and thereby engines of human flourishing,\u201d Westermann said. She added that locals make up 40% of the Guggenheim\u2019s museum visitors, which informed her advice: stop chasing the \u201cBilbao Effect\u201d and instead aspire to what she called \u201cBilbao 2.0\u201d\u2014a strategy prioritizing the development of a site-specific museum. \u201cThere are no cultural districts that flourish by hand alone. They cannot exist without distinctive institutions within them, and art museums are key to that for a reason,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tBedell, with her characteristic calm, stressed that Hong Kong\u2014like any aspiring cultural district\u2014shouldn\u2019t\u00a0be overly reliant on government funding. Costs creep up where you least expect them:\u00a0maintaining\u00a0roads, sewage, utilities, and public open spaces\u2014technical matters most museum-studies programs\u00a0probably skip\u00a0over.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tEllis, who consults on these matters at the highest levels,\u00a0essentially told\u00a0the world\u2019s most powerful cultural professionals to get more creative. If patrons have\u00a0flipped\u00a0the script\u2014What does my patronage buy\u00a0me?<\/em>\u2014he suggested finding unconventional revenue: adjacent parking lots, art hotels, consulting, franchising, in short. Though, this thought process\u00a0doesn\u2019t\u00a0come naturally to the museum-minded,\u00a0he acknowledged.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt\u2019s great that museums are generally quite conservative in their government structures,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I do think that if I were looking ahead 20 years or so, I would be increasingly bold in my thinking about earned income, simply because of inevitable trends.\u201d\u00a0 [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/2026-hong-kong-cultural-summit-museum-leaders-talk-1234778685\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/IMG_1539-e1774368609908.jpeg?w=1024″] \u201cWe are\u00a0witnessing\u00a0growing geopolitical complexity around the world. In times like\u00a0these, culture matters more than ever. Culture transcends borders,\u201d said Hong Kong\u2019s Secretary for Culture, Sports and Tourism,\u00a0Rosanna Law, at the opening ceremony of this\u00a0year\u2019s Hong Kong International Cultural Summit on Monday.\u00a0 The remark offered\u00a0one of\u00a0the\u00a0summit\u2019s\u00a0few,\u00a0curated\u00a0nods to\u00a0the destabilizing effects of the spiraling U.S.\u2013Israel\u2013Iran […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1845605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1845605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1845605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1845605\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1845605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1845605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1845605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n