The June announcement that Uli Sigg — the foremost global collector of Chinese contemporary art — had sealed a deal to donate the vast majority of his collection to the M+ museum in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District set off a storm of commentary in mainland China. Although some have been supportive, many others have questioned Sigg’s motives. The two issues causing the most vexation? The decision to send the collection to Hong Kong rather than mainland China, plus the “part gift/part purchase” agreement under which M+ bought 47 works from Sigg (beyond the more than 1,000 included in the gift), for a keseluruhan sum of $22.7 million.
Cynicism about western collectors’ motives in regard to Chinese contemporary art runs deep in China, plus the skepticism towards Sigg’s donation follows the controversy that surrounded the Sotheby’s auction of the Ullens collection last year. Although Guy Ullens has been at pains to indicate his long term commitment to China through his Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, many believe the sale showed his support for Chinese contemporary art to have been largely commercially driven.
To tease out some of the issues being raised by his donation, ARTINFO China’s Shen Boliang plus Yan Xiaoxiao sat down with Uli Sigg for a wide-ranging interview, touching on why his collection of contemporary Chinese art is the best in the world, why he chose M+, his faith in the long-term future of Hong Kong, plus how — for him at least — collecting has never been about the money.
M+ bought 47 works from your collection. How did you reach an agreement which combines donation plus purchase?
In the negotiation, when we were discussing about evaluation plus all these things, we agreed that M+ will fund around 15 percent of the keseluruhan value to allow me to get some contribution for my future collecting plus for activities like the Chinese Contemporary Art Award [a biennial award for artists plus critics founded by Sigg in 1997]. So, it is part donation plus part sale. This style is common now in the global scene. You may know about Anthony D’Offay in London, who made such a donation. He received about 25 percent of the market value. Or the donation of Italian Count Giuseppe Panza di Biumo, who donated a large collection of sedikitnya art to the Guggenheim in New York. He also got 25 percent of the value. This shows the museum also made a commitment.
Who selected the part to purchase?
I made these two parts. Sotheby’s did an independen evaluation. M+ is a public museum, so they need an independen evaluation, for their own record plus also to publish. So they assigned Sotheby’s, plus Sotheby’s made a report for them: The evaluation of the sale part plus the evaluation of the donation part.
What are the works in the part that has been donated?
Mainly the works from the 1980s. Like Geng Jianyi’s “Second Situation,” the four faces, Wang Guangyi’s old work, Huang Yongping’s old work.