The Global Private Museum Summit, which launched in 2013 at the London contemporary art fair, Art13, will be moving to Shanghai for its next iteration.

The summit, a gathering of private museum owners to share expertise and funding strategies and plan exhibitions around the world, is spearheaded by Philip Dodd, the former director of London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, and was staged at the same London fair over the past three years, will now be staged on November 21 to coincide with another art fair, Art021. Dodd is also currently preparing the launch of the Global Private Museum Network website—a platform that will serve as a kind of club that will help museum owners interact with each other and collaborate.

The Walther Collection.
Image: Neu Ulm

After its Shanghai outing, it will be “peripatetic,” moving from region to region, Dodd told artnet News about the Summit.

The Summit was a major attraction of the London fair ensuring the presence of major international contemporary art collectors from Don and Mera Rubell (USA), Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Italy), Wang Wei and Budi Tek (China). Art16 will be the poorer without it.

The launch of the Global Private Museum Network will coincide with the opening of the latest private museum in China this month—in Wuhan. The trend for Chinese collectors to open private museums continues to grow, he says, and Wang Wei is set to announce the opening of her third museum. According to Dodd, it will be in Chongqing, the largest city in the world, and will open in May 2016. No further details are available at present. Another attendant, said Dodd, will be Hoi Kin Hong, founder of the Powerlong Museum, who is rolling out private museums across several cities in China, including Shanghai.

“China is the heart of the private museum world” said Dodd, “which is why we are holding the Summit there. Members were given a choice of staging the summit in Miami or Shanghai, and they chose Shanghai. Next year it could be Dubai.”

For the opening of the Network, which Dodd said will be the “first global network of museums, whether public or private,” they have limited initial participation to 18 museums. This includes established ones such as Thomas Olbricht’s me Collectors Room in Berlin, Dakis Joannou’s Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art in Greece, Artur Walther’s incomparable photography museum in Germany and New York, new ones that are opening in Mexico this month along with names less familiar in the West such as the Elgiz Museum in Istanbul, Oei Hong Djien’s OHD museum in Indonesia, and the Jean-Paul Najar Foundation in Dubai (opening in November). At the Summit in November, there will be 10 private museums from China meeting with “their global peers from Europe, the US and the Middle East,” said Dodd.

Long Museum West Bund.

Co-operation (and friendly competition) between the world’s wealthy private museum owners will benefit the public and artists alike. Dodd’s dream is to establish co-commissions where museum owners share the cost of commissioning an artist and exhibiting the work globally. Co-commissioning could also involve public museums, and the building of relationships between the two could have a positive impact on fundraising and the touring of exhibitions. Ultimately, his aim is to raise the profile of the private museum, and to establish links between the East and West.

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