“We signed the MOU with M+ as a result of our two establishments share the aspiration to develop new, extra inclusive types of partnership … based mostly on a real trade of information, expertise and experience on each side,” stated Cecile Debray, president of the French museum.
“Worldwide collaborations allow us not solely to stimulate the cultural scene overseas, but in addition to diversify our viewpoints inside our personal establishments. It’s a solution to problem and renew oneself, [which] the Musee Nationwide Picasso-Paris makes a precedence.”
Sitting alongside works on the M+, Picasso’s items could be examined from an Asian up to date perspective that “decentres the Western standpoint”, with Debray calling it “an unprecedented challenge that enables a contemporary interpretation of Picasso’s well-known oeuvre”.
She additionally highlighted the social side of studying about Picasso’s works, from the debates about his attitudes in direction of girls to his hyperlinks with communism.
Debray stated one of many goals of the partnership was to learn from M+’s native experience, its information of the Hong Kong creative scene and its hyperlinks with different establishments within the metropolis.
Tom Learner, head of the Los Angeles-based Getty Conservation Institute’s science division, who additionally signed an MOU, echoed Debray’s level that worldwide collaborations might open up potentialities for brand spanking new approaches and views.
![Arts leaders and officials on stage at the International Cultural Summit. The event brought together museum leaders, curators and performing arts organisations from around the world. Photo: Elson Li](https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/2024/04/01/b0fff985-080a-490f-aed6-c1282108c7c7_f607b7b0.jpg)
“Nations within the West are being made to assume very rigorously concerning the course of and the way in which they method issues, [that they] will not be the one approach of doing issues. I don’t wish to generalise about East and West, however there’s a part of that the place there are variations,” Learner stated.
“Generally being challenged on presumptions that you just might need had for a few years could be very useful in seeing the larger image and understanding completely different views.”
The institute is likely one of the 4 branches of the Getty Belief and is concentrated on advancing conservation practices of artefacts and structure by means of scientific analysis, which in keeping with Learner, is now growing strategies to protect up to date artwork.
He stated it was a problem as a result of, not like conventional mediums of artwork similar to oil work or marble sculptures, there was no established information of how the large vary of supplies utilized in fashionable and up to date artworks would age and the way they need to be cleaned.
Will top-class summit put Hong Kong on global cultural map?
Will top-class summit put Hong Kong on global cultural map?
“One of many driving elements for working with M+ was that a whole lot of our work on fashionable up to date artwork to this point has been based mostly round Western – [such as] European and North American – artists and collections,” Learner stated.
“There’s an actual, as everybody’s doing, push to diversify and apply the identical type of methods to a much wider group of artists or kind of paintings from all around the globe,” he stated. “It’s the Asian aspect of that is actually one thing that we really feel there’s every kind of analysis and work that may very well be performed,” he stated.
Collaborations with M+ sooner or later might take the type of digital skilled workshops on conservation or on the respective establishments’ bases in Hong Kong or the USA.
“There’s [also] a complete benefit to sharing sources. Not each single place has to have each single piece of scientific gear. It’s a lot better to have interaction on this type of sharing possibility,” he added.
![Pablo Picasso’s Portrait of a Man. Masterpieces from the famous artist will go on display in Hong Kong as part of a new collaboration. Photo: Musee National Picasso-Paris](https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/2024/04/01/15b1129d-2340-41c0-80f4-9c770a483720_17f8ee9c.jpg)
Signing an MOU on behalf of Spain’s Prado Museum with the Hong Kong Palace Museum was its director Miguel Falomir, who has spent the final seven years in his place taking care of the museum’s sixteenth and seventeenth century European work.
“We’ve to rethink ourselves – we’re a museum targeted on Western artwork, artwork of the previous and principally by white males,” Falomir stated. “On a regular basis we’re making an attempt to clarify why a museum like Prado nonetheless issues to [the audience].
“It’s a query that in all probability none of my predecessors [asked]. They didn’t want to do this as a result of they assumed that no person questioned that Western artwork was the muse of tradition. This isn’t true. We’ve to reinvent ourselves. We’ve to simply accept that we live in a extra globalised world,” he stated.
Falomir stated he appeared ahead to collaborating with the Palace Museum and noticed a hyperlink between the 2 establishments as a result of Prado’s collections are principally from the previous royal Spanish courtroom, whereas the Hong Kong counterpart hosted exhibitions of imperial Chinese language artefacts.
“Our public shouldn’t be acquainted with Chinese language artwork,” he stated. “I’m satisfied that they might like to see Chinese language artistic endeavors in Madrid.”
Falomir stated he was a agency believer in cross-cultural exhibitions as they served as environment friendly methods to attach completely different societies.
“Though I feel we have now to do it with some care, we have now to be very conscious of the variations in historical past and societies, however moreover that, it’s all the time simple to discover a frequent floor between completely different cultures and society all through historical past.”