The West Kowloon Cultural District Authority (WKCDA) announced a ground breaking arrangement in collaboration with the Palace Museum to launch a new museum in the West Kowloon Cultural District with long term loans from the museum. Under this special arrangement, the Hong Kong Palace Museum (HKPM) will be established by the WKCDA to be a new focal point of the district for displaying the visual culture of 5,000 years of historical Chinese art from the imperial courts.
     Situated in the very heart of Beijing, the Palace Museum is a UNESCO World Heritage Site renowned for its vast holding of over 1.8 million artefacts including paintings, ceramics, calligraphy, and antiquities belonging to the imperial collections. The Palace Museum houses many nationally protected valuable cultural objects, but only a small fraction of this extraordinary collection is on display to the public at any given time given the space constraint.
     The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSARG) considered the West Kowloon Cultural District the ideal location for establishing this unprecedented museum to showcase the collections of the Palace Museum. As one of the world’s most ambitious cultural and infrastructure projects, the West Kowloon Cultural District offers a unique location for the presentation of treasures from the Palace Museum. The HKPM will display work from the Palace Museum collection on a long-term basis.
     The Memorandum of Understanding of Cooperation for the HKPM project was signed by the Board Chairman of the WKCDA, Mrs Carrie Lam, and the Director of the Palace Museum, Dr Shan Jixiang, in Beijing on 23 December, 2016.
     Expected to be opened in 2022, the HKPM will further strengthen Hong Kong’s position as the cultural metropolis. In addition, it will provide a valuable opportunity for collaboration with local institutions in research and education. Through the establishment of these museums, M+ and HKPM will provide a broader scope to nurture the careers of emerging museum professionals across curatorial, educational and other professional areas of museum management in Hong Kong.
     The new HKPM will be a purpose-built museum in the West Kowloon Cultural District. The 10,000 sq m site of the new museum will be located on the western harbourfront. The project will have a total GFA of approximately 30,500 sq m. It will provide permanent galleries devoted to showing the Palace Museum collections that highlight imperial life and culture as well as educational and ancillary facilities. The capital cost of the HKPM will be fully funded by a donation of HK$3.5 billion from the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust.
     The HKPM will be managed by a wholly-owned subsidiary of the WKCDA with its own governance structure, Board and its own team of staff including curatorial, conservation, registration, exhibition, management and learning teams of specialists.
     The HKPM will occupy a prime location on Hong Kong’s harbourfront within easy reach by public transportation, and will be adjacent to a proposed exhibition hub comprising an exhibition centre, hotels and offices. The WKCDA has endorsed the appointment of Rocco Yim of Rocco Design Architects Limited as the architect to carry out the design of the HKPM.