PRESS RELEASE MORE THAN 40 PRIVATE MUSEUM OWNERS FROM ASIA AND THE WEST GATHER FOR THE

ART HK PRIVATE MUSEUM FORUM AND THE INAUGURAL ART HK PRIVATE MUSEUM PANEL, IN PARTNERSHIP WITH VERTU
Hong Kong, 28 March 2012 Back for its fifth year, ART HK 12 Hong Kong International Art Fair will take place 17-20 May 2012, preview 16 May, at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC). ART HK is delighted to announce the return of the Private Museum Forum, which debuted at last years Fair. This year the Fair will complement the exclusive and by invitation-only Forum with a public session, which will bring the importance of the private museum to a wider audience. The ART HK Private Museum Forum and the ART HK Private Museum Panel, in partnership with Vertu, will take place Thursday 17 May 2012. In 2011, ART HK introduced the inaugural Private Museum Forum, a pioneering initiative which saw influential private museum owners and directors from across the world come together for the very first time in a unique summit to discuss shared goals and concerns. 30 owners and directors of private museums and galleries were invited to participate in a round table discussion, jointly chaired by the major US collectors Don and Mera Rubell and by Li Bing, owner of Beijing He Jing Yuan Art Museum. The ambition of the Forum was to develop a network among private museums as strong as the network among public museums and to underline the increasingly important role of the private museum in offering the art world and the wider public access to the latest developments in Contemporary Art. Private museums in Asia are platforms for the most cutting edge Contemporary Art across the region. The number of Asian private museums and the presence of those from the West makes this closed seminar a genuinely global forum. Participants from across the Asia Pacific region included important Chinese museum owners such as Thomas Ou of the Rockbund Museum in Shanghai and Li Bing, owner of Beijing He Jing Yuan Art Museum. Other notable participants were Tan Guobin, collector and director of Tan Guobin Contemporary Art Museum, Dr. Oei Hong Djien, owner of the OHD Museum in Indonesia, Monique Burger, founder of The Burger Collection, Hong Kong, and Judith Neilson of the White Rabbit Foundation, a Chinese Contemporary Art museum in Sydney. Further participants at this years Fair will include Budi Tek, owner of the Yuz Museum in Jakarta, Dai Zhi Kang, founder of the Himalayas Art Museum in Shanghai, Wang Wei, owner of the Dragon Museum, also in Shanghai, Zhu Tong, Director of the Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing, Guy Ullens, founder of the UCCA, Beijing, and Ginevra Elkann, President of the Pinacoteca Agnelli, Turin. In the Asia Pacific region, despite significant growth of interest in Contemporary Art in recent years, a strong network of publicly funded institutions has been lacking. Therefore the role of the private museum in these territories is vital. Private museums are developing at a significant rate in all territories across the Asia Pacific, from Australia to China, India, Japan and Indonesia. The opportunity for such galleries and museums to learn from one another is significant. The ART HK Private Museum Forum, bringing together the most pioneering private museum owners from both Asia and the rest of the world, was the first meeting of its kind in the world. The Private Museum Forum at ART HK 12 will consolidate its role as a unique network, uniting high level owners and directors of private museums from around the world and chaired by Philip Dodd, former Director of the ICA and ART HK Advisory Group member. This years exclusive private Forum

will enable private museum owners and directors from across Asia and across the world to meet in a private seminar to explore how to make such institutions sustainable in programming, financial and educational terms and how they might develop shared programmes in the same way that public museums frequently do. The Forum will focus on the practical aspects of running a private museum, encompassing important topics such as how to source funding, how to successfully curate exhibitions, and crucially how to develop both local and international audiences. Working not through speeches and presentations but sustained private conversations, the Forum will be a place in which the practical issues of developing a global private museum ecology can be discussed. ART HK, the place to see the most cutting edge developments in Contemporary Art from across Asia and the rest of the world, is a fitting milieu for the Forum to take place, bringing together owners and directors of private museums across Asia and the West to share knowledge and experience of how to succeed as a commercial enterprise. The Fair in 2012 will also bring to the Forum a new element which will complement the by-invitation closed seminar, the ART HK Private Museum Panel in partnership with Vertu. This session aims to open up many issues surrounding the development of museums and galleries in Asia to a wider public audience. Centred on the subject of private and public museums across Asia, the public panel discussion, which is free to attend, welcomes six speakers from across Asia to share their experience and knowledge with the public: Wang Huangsheng, Director of CAFA Gallery, Beijing, and former Director of Guangdong Museum of Art; Li Bing, owner of Beijing He Jing Yuan Art Museum; Dr Oei Hong Djin, owner of OHD Museum, near Borobudur a 9th-century Mahayana Buddhist monument in Magelang, Indonesia; KC Kwok, Executive Director and consultant to the National Art Gallery, Singapore; Wang Wei, collector and owner of the Dragon Art Museum, Shanghai, due to open November 2012; and Lars Nittve, former Director of Tate Modern, London, and Executive Director of M+, a major museum of Contemporary Art being developed in the West Kowloon Cultural District of Hong Kong. Magnus Renfrew, ART HK Fair Director commented: We would like ART HK to be a platform for developing the audience and market for Contemporary Art in Asia and providing a global audience an opportunity to discover and learn about Contemporary Art from the region. Inviting high level owners and directors of private museums from throughout Asia and the rest of the world to share their diverse knowledge and experience is an ideal way of supporting collaborative networks, and we are pleased to have such enthusiastic involvement from participants. Vertu, pioneer of the luxury mobile phone industry, is delighted to be involved in the ART HK Private Museum Forum. The Vertu Global Art Commission, established by Vertu in 2011 aims to find artists who push boundaries and strive for perfection in their work. The first collaboration of the Commission was a project with renowned British sculptor Richard Wilson, entitled Hold the Line. Perry Oosting, Chief Executive of Vertu, comments: Art embodies the values of creativity, courage and authenticity and these are intrinsic attributes that Vertu has long adhered to. When harnessed, these principles often lead to great works of creative substance that instill credibility in our fast moving world today. ART HK is the only world class art fair to have a 50/50 balance of Asian and Western participation. The total number of galleries at ART HK 12 is 266, representing 39 territories.

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Notes to Editors: ART HK is organised by Asian Art Fairs Ltd and produced in collaboration with Art Basel. In July 2011, MCH Swiss Exhibition (Basel) Ltd., a MCH Group company and organiser of Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach, acquired a 60% ownership stake in Asian Art Fairs Ltd. ART HK Hong Kong International Art Fair has been held in the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre since 2008. Its success reflects the increasing importance of the Asian art market and the fact that Hong Kong is now the worlds third most important art market. It is now firmly established as the premier art event in Asia and is a key fixture in the international art calendar. ART HK prides itself as the best place in the world to see the latest developments in art from across Asia in the context of the best of international art from Europe and America. Fair Director Magnus Renfrew brings over a decade of art industry experience to the Fair and recently featured in le Journal des Arts 100 Most Influential People in the Art World in February 2011 and in Art Reviews Power 100 in October 2010. Furthermore, Renfrew was named one of the 10 most influential figures in the Asian Art Scene by Chinese Contemporary Art News in February 2009. Dates: 17 20 May 2012 Press view: 16 May 2012 Website: www.hongkongartfair.com

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Partners Mandarin Oriental, Official Hotel to ART HK The iconic Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong has once again been named the Official Hotel for ART HK 2012. Situated in the heart of Hong Kong and close to the Fair, the hotel will celebrate the partnership by offering guests a series of benefits, including tickets to the Fair, a special ART menu in the Michelin-starred Mandarin Grill + Bar and art-inspired cocktails in M bar. Guests will also be invited to view an exhibition by one of Hong Kongs best young artists and winner of the Hong Kong Biennale in 2009, Tang Kwok Hin, in the Clipper Lounge. For further information please contact Nina Colls on ncolls@mohg.com or visit www.mandarinoriental.com/hongkong

Honorary Patron Sir David Tang Fair Chairman Thomas Shao Collector and Media Entrepreneur Advisory Group Richard Chang Philanthropist and Collector Elaine W. Ng Editor and publisher of ArtAsiaPacific Magazine Alan Lo Collector, Hong Kong entrepreneur and restaurateur Judith Neilson Collector and Founder and Director of White Rabbit Collection Philip Dodd former Director of ICA London Monique Burger Collector Yang Bin Collector Nitin Bhayana Collector Takeo Obayashi Collector and Chairman of the Obayashi Corporation Rudy Tseng Collector

Location: Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC) www.hkcec.com

For media inquiries, please contact: International contact: Sutton PR Roxana Pennie roxana@suttonpr.com Tani Burns tani@suttonpr.com +44 (0) 207 183 3577 Hong Kong contact: Cohn&Wolfe-impactasia Louise Oram: louiseo@impactasia.com Heiman Ng: heiman@impactasia.com Jacqueline Matthews: jacqueline@impactasia.com +852 2521 1498 Follow ART HK on Twitter and Facebook: www.twitter.com/arthk www.facebook.com/arthkofficial