Shanghai Calling

For years the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art has been at the forefront of the art scene in Beijing—now it’s expanding beyond the capital

- Oliver Giles

The Covid-19 pandemic hit museums like a tsunami. Institutions around the world were forced to close their doors for months on end, leading to huge losses in revenue, drastic cost-cutting measures and desperate calls for funding. But while galleries in the US and Europe floundered, one prominent museum in China was not only staying afloat—it was planning a major expansion.

“We are hoping to open our space in Shanghai at the end of the first quarter of 2021,” says Philip Tinari, director and CEO of UCCA Center for Contemporary Art. “It is a very exciting moment for us.”

UCCA was founded in 2007 in a 110,000 sq ft former factory in Beijing’s 798 Art District, where it has hosted nearly 150 exhibitions and draws more than a million visitors a year. In late 2018, Tinari opened the museum’s first outpost, UCCA Dune, an underground, cavelike gallery buried beneath the beach of the popular resort town of Aranya on China’s Bohai Sea coast. Now, Tinari is opening a third space: UCCA Edge, a 50,000 sq ft space in Shanghai’s up-and-coming Jing’an neighbourhood. “For the first ten years we were very focused on Beijing, but we felt it was time for the institution to build a more national profile for itself,” says Tinari.