When asked why he was willing to spend huge sums to establish a private art museum in Shanghai, Chinese-Indonesian agribusiness entrepreneur and art collector Budi Tek (Yu Deyao) replied with a well-known saying of Confucius: Zhiqi bukewei erweizhi - "Do what you know is impossible."

Covering a total area of 9,000 square meters, the Yuz Museum is located along the waterfront of Xuhui district on the west bank of the Huangpu River, where the Xuhui district government has been planning the West Bund Cultural Corridor.

An artistic rendition of Yuz Museum Photo: Courtesy of Yuz Museum

In this Confucius proverb, someone who does something they know is impossible is regarded as a sage, but Tek said that many of his friends jokingly call him a fool.

Just one kilometer away from the Yuz Museum, the 16,000-square-meter second private art museum of Wang Wei and Liu Yiqian, a Chinese entrepreneur and art collector couple, is scheduled to open in the spring. Their first private art museum in Shanghai, the 10,000-square-meter Long Museum, opened in December 2012 in Pudong New Area.

Also in Pudong New Area, the Shanghai Himalayas Museum financed by private conglomerate Zendai Group, opened last June. The nearly 10,000-square-meter Hao museum founded by Zheng Hao, a businessman and art collector from Zhejiang Province, will open in 2017.

In downtown Shanghai, relatively smaller private art galleries, like Jinghua Art Space on Tongren Road and Shanghai Basai Contemporary Art Museum on Yuyao Road, have also opened their doors in recent months.

Tek admitted that it is a risk to establish a private art museum, especially given current circumstances in China, where the business and national policy environment is still developing and not yet mature. "It still needs time to improve," he noted.

However, he said that his main motivation is his confidence in the city. He believes Shanghai is comparable with London and New York in terms of its economy.

"Shanghai must have enough ability to develop as a cultural metropolis with the booming of contemporary art, especially the West Bund Cultural Corridor, where I believe that the cluster of cultural forces can also drive the growth of my museum," he said.

The exterior of Shanghai Himalayas Museum

"And I'm confident in my own art collection," he added. Since he began collecting contemporary art almost a decade ago, Tek has developed a particular interest in large installation works. With a 10-meter-high roof, the 3,000-square-meter main exhibition hall of Yuz Museum, which used to be an old aircraft hangar, has been converted specifically to display Tek's collection of large installation works. Among them is an installation by Paris-based Algerian conceptual artist Adel Abdessemed made with airplane frames, which can be seen at the museum's opening exhibition in May.

Like most private museums in Shanghai, Tek hopes that in the future, his museum can be self-financed by sales from admission tickets and the museum's interior design and furniture store, restaurant, coffee bar and bookshop.  

Xiao Ge, a Chinese overseas returnee artist, told the Global Times that Thomas Krens, the Senior Advisor for International Affairs at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, managing one of the most successful private museums in the world, used to say that the three essentials for running a private museum are time, money and art. In Xiao's opinion, no private museum in China has fully met Krens' criteria thus far.

She told the Global Times that most of the private museums in China are built as vanity projects with luxurious décor, but with less forethought given to operating costs.

The exterior of Long Museum Photos: IC and CFP

Xiao said that in China, there are not enough professional personnel with experience running a private museum, a concern shared by Tek. "And of course, at the state level, preferential policies for private museums also need to be improved," Xiao added.

Tek said he doesn't care if other people view his behavior as foolish now. But he noted, "I'm thinking that I will probably give myself 10 years as a deadline. By that time, if the museum named after me is still not self-sustaining, I will look for a new master for it."

He insisted that even if the museum starts to make a profit, he promises that everything will remain art-related and all profits will be returned to the museum.