MOMA announced last month that it had entered into a partnership to share artworks and the entire exhibition with the Hong Kong four-year-old M+ Museum of Modern Art, representing another cultural victory in one of China’s most prosperous cities. This seems like a win for MOMA, as the institution will now have a greater chance of gaining renowned East Asian artists and Hong Kong collectors. The new partnership takes place months before the Guggenheim Museum completes its long-awaited outpost in the United Arab Emirates Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, and is expected to open next year. Like Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi is a city with wealthy residents, some of whom may be art collectors and potential donors in Guggenheim, who recently laid off twenty employees to build financial positions in New York City’s family agencies.
The appeal of Hong Kong and Abu Dhabi to these two New York museums is obvious, but so are the potential risks. Although art institutions in Manhattan are free to display any artwork of their choice, this may not be the case in China or the UAE, where nudity, anti-government images or other representations of speech are prohibited from being exposed, antiquated, or seen as Islam. “It is almost impossible to show any artwork involving the political topics of the Gulf region,” Saudi Arabian artist Abdulnasser Gharem told Observer. In 2017, his paintings Prosperity without growth (It includes a brief text that references the Yemeni War, which involves the UAE and Saudi Arabia) The Art Fair Abu Dhabi was “deleted approximately an hour before its opening” under the orders of fair officials. The painting is located at a stall in Cologne, Germany, and is headquartered in Germany by a dealer Brigitte Schenk.
Leila Heller has conducted a less harsh assessment of the dealers of galleries in New York City and Dubai, whose roster includes Middle Eastern artists. “I’ve shown any artist I want and no one is trying to stop me,” she told Observer.
Hong Kong’s crackdown on artworks in violation of official government policies and the attacks of artists who created it are even more omnipresent. For example, a sculpture commemorating the sedation of the Tianman Square in Beijing in 1989 was evacuated from the University of Hong Kong in 2021. In the second half of last year, Hong Kong artist Clarisse Yeung, a Hong Kong artist, pro-democracy activist and member of the city’s regional council, was sentenced to a state prison sentence of “six years of national law”. The special administrative area has hosted large auctions at Bonhams, Christie’s, Phillips and Sotheby’s, and visitors will be welcomed to the 2025 Art Basel Hong Kong later this month. Balancing its intention to be seen as a refined city and maintaining close social control is its leader, and now it is a challenge for the Museum of Modern Art.
“China is complicated,” said Gordon Veneklasen, co-owner of Michael Werner Gallery in New York City. “It’s not easy to perform in China because you need approval.” Recently, at another art fair in Hong Kong, officials told him that a painting was removed from his booth showing animals eating people’s arms, but that was unusual because the dealer knew what not to bring. “You show enough time there, you know not to push things too far.” He hates “censorship and the limits on creativity,” but he admits that China represents a huge, untapped market. “Asia is an important part of the future.”
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Eli Klein, the owner of Manhattan Gallery, specializes in contemporary Asian art, and his gallery of the same name will also be exhibited on Basel Hong Kong artworks. Chinese people are wary of nudity. The offensive image of Mao Zedong is usually prohibited, just like the references in Tiananmen Square. But he added: “The situation in Hong Kong is relatively free,” he believes, “China’s censorship of art has been exaggerated.”
The organizers of the art fair said more clearly. “We have never faced scrutiny issues in Hong Kong performances,” an Art Basel spokesman told Observer. “The final art selection is at the discretion of the participating galleries, under the guidance of their own curatorial aspects.”
There are considerable differences in experiences in areas where artists, auctioneers, fair organizers and museum curators work on censorship, and it is worth noting that creativity may not be significantly inhibited in places where self-censorship is stressful. Abdulnasser Gharem said he “is currently conducting a solo exhibition at the Yuz Museum in Shanghai. The first step I have to take is to submit all the artworks and specify every citation and phrase contained therein, as well as references that provide other context. After that, the Chinese government will issue a license to the approved works and we will then start organizing the exhibition based on recognized works.”
Guggenheim and MOMA officials did not answer questions about whether relevant local government approval is required before certain artworks or the entire exhibition is displayed. Perhaps, as Gordon Veneklasen suggested, curators at these New York museums already knew not to show what could be left to the right of the law. Perhaps a deeper concern for the Museum of Modern Art is how impressive its position would be if China often threatened to do so, or if trade issues between China and China and the United States led to tensions and even hostilities. Beyond that, the focus on censorship of arts has prompted a different question: Will cultural partnerships and institutions extending to areas where restrictions on expression lead to the opportunity to ensure that people created under the control of the government are more artistically independent? This remains to be seen.
