Honoring an art lover

Budi Tek, Chinese-Indonesian collector. [Photo provided to China Daily]

"Art museums are palaces of thoughts. It is our duty to manage museums so that they can make contributions to a country's cultural progress."

He says several contemporary Chinese artists exhibited at the museum have since been invited to show abroad.

"But we need to be very careful. I tell my team that one can make a wrong purchase, but one cannot stage a wrong exhibition.

"We normally spend two years preparing an exhibition. We try to spend wisely to make every exhibition a good one."

Yuz Museum was one of the first cultural institutions in the West Bund, an area of 9.4 square kilometers on the western bank of the Huangpu River. It features such venues as the Long Museum, founded by the collector couple, Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei.

Tek says that when his friends visited Shanghai over a decade ago, they asked him if there were museums that exhibited contemporary art, but he could find very few.

Now there are many, he says.

"When the Giacometti show opened, I told West Bund Group officials the exhibition would boost tourism."

He says they did not believe him until they saw the long lines outside the museum.

Tek says the director of a Paris museum once told him that a city without a good art museum is not respected.

"This museum (Yuz) belongs to everyone and Shanghai."

Contact the writer at linqi@chinadaily.com.cn