In the posting “Art in China: Public & Private” on artnet, Barbara Pollack sits down with Guo Xiaoyan, vice director of the new Minsheng Museum to discuss Minsheng’s corporate collection and its cultural initiatives.

Minsheng Museum is a new development by one of the largest banks in China and slated to open in 2013 in Beijing:

According to Guo, Minsheng made the decision to develop a “corporate social responsibility program” focused on cultural activities in 2007, due in part to the fact that many of its directors were art lovers and collectors themselves. “They don’t have a single leader in this initiative, it’s a whole team,” says Guo. “Economic development in China is going quite well, so it is about time to develop culture.”

Minsheng has also been building a corporate art collection that numbers over 400 works of Chinese contemporary art. The new museum is to devote 5,000 square meters to displaying these works, which date back to 1976, the very beginning of the Chinese contemporary art scene following the Cultural Revolution. The collection features key works by artists such as Huang Yong Ping, Wang Guangyi, Zhang Peili and Liu Xiaodong, among many others.

In addition to the Chinese contemporary art collection, the company has also been focusing and acquiring international art, especially from South Africa and India. According to Pollack, “the museum is also commissioning new works and is currently in discussions with Anish Kapoor and Anselm Kiefer, who is keen to have a major show in China.”

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