Hong Kong Palace Museum Opens With 914 Treasures From Beijing

The Hong Kong Palace Museum opened to the public on 3 July 2022 at the western end of the West Kowloon Cultural District, eight months after its neighbour M+. It is dedicated to Chinese art and imperial culture and shows objects on long-term loan from the Palace Museum in Beijing, the institution that looks after the collections of the Forbidden City.

The opening displays brought 914 pieces from Beijing, the largest loan the Palace Museum has made to another institution, including paintings, calligraphy, ceramics, jades, bronzes, textiles and objects from court life, a number of them never shown publicly before. The most fragile works, among them early paintings and calligraphy, are displayed for limited periods and rotated. One of the opening exhibitions also included 13 works lent by the Louvre, on the theme of the horse in art.

The building was designed by Hong Kong architect Rocco Yim of Rocco Design Architects. It has about 30,500 square metres of floor space and nine galleries, arranged around three atriums that climb through the building and open towards the harbour, an arrangement that refers to the central axis of the Forbidden City without copying its forms. The outline, wider at the top than at the base, takes its cue from ancient Chinese bronze vessels, and the ceilings carry curved panels in a golden tone that recall glazed palace roof tiles.

Construction began in 2019 and was funded by a donation of HK$3.5 billion from The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust. The museum is led by director Louis Ng and is run by the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority.

Together with M+, the Xiqu Centre for Chinese opera and the waterfront park, the museum completes a cultural quarter that can fill a full day or more of a stay in Hong Kong. It also gives the city something it did not have: a place to see imperial Chinese art of the first rank without travelling to Beijing or Taipei.