Porsche at Modern Art Museum Shanghai — Porsche Young Chinese Artist of the Year (2017)

Modern Art Museum Shanghai hosted the nominees' exhibition for the Porsche Young Chinese Artist of the Year programme in September 2017.

The venue

Modern Art Museum Shanghai is a contemporary art museum in Shanghai. Its galleries are normally used for temporary exhibitions, accompanied by talks, press previews and public programmes. The venue sits within the city's art-museum circuit and provides indoor exhibition rooms suited to displaying artworks rather than commercial retail or performance layouts. Its gallery scale and location make it a setting for cultural projects that need an art-institution context.

How the space was used

For this project, the museum's exhibition galleries held the nominees' exhibition, presenting works by the shortlisted young Chinese artists. A press conference on 31 August opened the programme, and the exhibition remained open to the public until 15 September. The rooms were organised as an artwork display rather than a brand showroom, with Porsche attached to the programme and the museum's existing gallery infrastructure carrying the show.

Why it works here

A contemporary art museum suits a brand-backed art award because the setting gives the works and the selection process a cultural frame. Visitors expect to look at art in these rooms, so an exhibition can sit alongside the institution's normal programming without turning the space into a showroom.