HE Art Center of Li Bing will soon be open to the public. This contemporary art museum with an investment of 10 million yuan and a special design by the architect is itself an work of art, a flag and a symbol. At present, the experiment of contemporary art in China is relatively mature, but the road to the experiment of contemporary art museum is still very far away as we all know that this is an extremely difficult road because there is no support from the state, one can only rely on the force of oneself. Confronted to unknown problems, risks and challenges, Li Bing has made his choice and achieved unexpected sensation and result. It represents the choice of everyone of those who are exploring the possibility of doing contemporary art museum in China. It is the experiment of the most ideal nature in the Chinese Contemporary Art.We want to have a « home »Whenever we travel in Europe and America, we notice that all kinds of museums and art museums can be found all over the cities, big or small, of the developed countries. And we often feel rather embarrassed and sad. China is supposed to « have a long tradition of culture and art »and « accounts for one fourth of the world’s population », however, museums aiming at collecting traditional art and cultural relics are very few, which is already a strong contrast to the proud declaration of the government. As for museums contributed to modern and contemporary art, there are almost none. The very few existing museums and art museums refuse and even hate the contemporary art persistently since the government takes un unflinching stand against the contemporary art. Taking as an example « China Art Museum » which enjoys the highest administrative level therefore an institution of authority, represents the most the official position of the state. They would rather fill the halls with all sorts of mediocre and sometimes even trash exhibitions (but of course they can afford to pay the expensive rental fees), or leave the halls vacant or even let a whole floor to the tourist companies to sell handicraft articles, they would absolutely not accept contemporary art. The examination committee does not exist only in shape, the problem is what they examine is not the quality of the work of art but the « problem » of the work of art. We can hardly find a second art museum in the whole world not to allow the installation art to enter the exhibition hall towards the end of the 20th century. They even threw the installation art work of an veteran South Korean artist from the exhibition hall to the courtyard while this artist has sacrificed all his life to the installation art. What happened in China Art Museum is not a joke for laughter, it is the « duty »of the examination committee to do so in order to safeguard their “metal rice bowl”.In the face of the above-mentioned situation, the heavy responsibility of building contemporary art museum falls completely upon the private enterprises. Ten years ago, three private art museums declaring to do « contemporary art » were open almost at the same time. They were « Upriver Gallery (October 1998) », Tianjin « TEDA Contemporary Art Museum (December 1998) and « DONGYU Museum of Fine Art (May 1998) » in Liaoning Shenyang. Although no way to compare with the situation in the developed countries in Europe and America, it did provide us with a « home » to return, it was un extraordinary feeling for the Chinese Contemporary Art which has been homeless and roaming about since 1979.All three investors of the above-mentioned museums first of all used the existing resources and transformed them into the exhibition space – the 450 m2 of Upriver was part of the selling office of an propriety ; the 580m2 of Teda was one complete floor of an hotel and the 350m2 was a corner of a bookstore. And then they all invited respectively the critics of art and artistes to form a professional team – Chen Jiagang of Upriver turned the consultative committee originally formed for the to-be-created Art Institute into an art committee (including Li Xianting, zhou Chunya, Zhang Xiaogang, Fang Lijun, Ye Yongqing and Wu Hong etc) ; Ma Huidong of Teda invited myself and Sun Jinzhong of Dongyu invited Wang Yigang. The involvement of the professional members made it possible for the three museums to steer the vessel from the very start in the right direction with professional orientation and function – based on collection, using exhibition as in impetus and gaining social influence through opening freely to the public. Thus three privately owned contemporary art museums started without budget, without collection, without experience, without sponsoring system and without any support and favourable policy from the state. Engaged in the process of exploring the possiblity of survival and the form of operation, they were marching forward with tremendous obstacles in the way. Although the investors and the professional members had intended to work together to have more influence and an historical meeting did take place in the Upriver of Kunming, unfortunately because the then overall climate would not go anywhere, and because of the respective difficulties, all three ceased the activites consecutively two or three years later. But in this very idealist experiment, everybody put in its resources and enthusiasm and accumulated a lot of first hand experience. As a direct participant in this trial process and as a long time wandering figure of the contemporary art, my deepest feeling at the time was « how nice to have a home of our own », because at our home, we finally obtained the right and freedom to do « what we wanted to do ».The spring we had promised each other arrived at last, being only a little lateIn recent years, Chinese contemporary art is in constant ascendant in terms of academic status and art market thanks to the continuous development of Chinese contemporary art itself and also due to the changing pattern of world contemporary art under the influence of international political and economic influences. Having gone through the heat of stocks, the heat of IT and the heat of real estate with their respective glory and disgrace, the culture industry has become the new favourite of the investment market. All these elements in concord at the same time directly caused the transformation in the main tendency of the contemporary art. Although still no official acknowledgement and support from the state, the interest of the private collectors and operators has increased considerably. They are basically the successful private entrepreneurs with rich business experience, clear market objectives and substantial financial resources combined with certain ideals and sentiments towards culture. Reinforced with such « capital », as soon as they invest in art, they want to strike hard and strong amazing the whole world with their zest. The feed back on the international scene is that some international and particularly Asian investors are very much motivated as well. As a consequence, opening up contemporary art galleries and spaces has become contagious thus creating a more favourable environment for the experiment in terms of contemporary art museum possibility. As for the initial three museums, Chen Jiagang of Upriver has become un addicted photographe, he said that within ten years he would not open up another art museum. Ma Huidong of TEDA has painstakingly taken care of his museum, always low key, never abandoning his faith. In the past two years, TEDA Contemporary Art Museum has insistently kept its investigation, research and collection activity related to the artists in the Yuanmingyuan community. This project has been extended to cover the important research subject on « artist community ». Their hardware has been upgraded considerably as well : a new museum has been built in the TEDA development zone (2500 m2), a newly built flagship museum in the Songzhuang Art Zone (300 m2) and other necessary facilities have also been added.The collection once belonging to Dongyu was bought by the entrepreneur Li Bing. Li Bing, nursed with his enthusiasm like wind and fire and in his typical stormy style, has first of all cleaned up Dongyu’s previous collection and based on this continued to collect new works of art. At the same time, he has invested 10 million yuan and constructed HE Art Center in the Songzhuang Art Zone (3200 m2). HE Art Center is composed of several independant spaces intended for collection display, promoting exhibitions and galleries. However in the case of a big demonstration, several spaces can be combined at the same time. This special design has laid down a good base for the upgrading of professionalism and public influence of the Center. The inauguration of HE Art Centere will take place on November 8th during the Songzhuang Art Festival, for this occasion, their contemporary art collection will be on display. This collection will be available to the public regularly in the future. This means for the very first time in China there is a museum for permanent comtemporary art display. It is really a flag in exploring the operational possibility of museums. Moreover, another privately owned museum « Today Museum » was opend in 2002, previously it was within 2000 m2 transformed from a former building selling office, now it has moved to the new site of 3000 m2 and reopened in October 2006. In this museum there is collection display, exhibition, publishing and magazines, and they enjoy the formal status of « non profitable institution ». The head of the museum Zhang Zikang tried to operate according to the western model of council sponsoring, until now Today Museum is the museum with the most complete organizational system. In October 2006, Songzhuang Art Museum (4700 m2° was finally open to the public. We define this museum as the museum « at the lowest administrative level in China » because it was invested by the Songzhuang Xiaopu Village Collectivity thus creating an entirely new model of doing contemporary art museum without private investment. The successful construction and operation of this museum is owed to the involvement of Contemporary Art Critic Li Xianting, the Party Secretary of Xiaopu Village Cui Dabai and the Party Secretary of Songzhuang Town Hu Jiebao. Each of them has used to its utmost their respective prestige and authority, resources and capabilities. This cooperation is completely unprecedented, it is simply a miracle. With its semi-public character, this museum enjoys an unparalleled favourable position in creating public influence compared to other privately owned museums. In the past the museums were transformed from the existing spaces, but now the newly built museums are all specially designed by the architects – Zhou Xi for new TEDA Contemporary Art Museum, Peng Lele for TEDA Flagship Museum, Kang Kai for HE Art Center, Wang Hui for New Today Museum and Xu Tiantian for Songzhuang Art Museum. The professionalism in terms of facilities and equipment is also un inseparable part of this idealist experiment.Awakened from a dream, we are still at a loss about who controls the ending In 1996, the head of the Shitiangu Art Museum wrote « What is an art museum », in the prelude he told a story to illustrate the initial development of the art museum. The story went that a village chief, surprised by the luminous lights of the city and envying their good fortune, bought a string of bulbs and a length of wire and hanged them from ceiling, of course he never achieved the result that he had wanted. In Japan it was from the seventies that local governments competed in establishing museums for modern and contemporary art. Arriving at nineties, there was not one city without a public art museum. A lot of private museums also came into being based on the private collections of collectioners. In early stages, museums established and operated by enterprises mainly aimed at collection. Since the nineteen seventies, the tendency was to build up art space aiming at display, planning various kinds of art exhibitions or encouraging avant-garde art. Museums, big or small, racked their brains in order to find their proper line of conduct and style. Mature, professional and plural kinds of operational models were formed, at the same time, museums ceased to be an art agency and place only, they have moved into the focus of concern and become a hot research subject themselves. This maturing process has taken several decades in Japan. Ten years ago, while doing museums, we were only motivated by enthusiasm and idealism. Today however the contemporary art is closely linked to ascending art market ; Therefore, it is like huge waves washing off mud and sand, it is rather confusing and puzzling. But two points can serve as our direction finder : firstly, who laughs at last laughs the best. In the surging waves, we do find mud and sand but we also find gold. It is not surprising that dragons and fish jumble together, good and bad are intermingled. Many are just followers like mud and sand including certain speculators with all kinds of opportunistic designs. The sedimentation of gold takes long, and we even need to pay a high price in order to establish and improve the rules of the game. We need to accumulate experience. But if we consider every effort of ours as an endeavour, an information, as an learning practice and personal experience, one day we will surely be muture and can stand up high. Secondly, the sugar canes are not sweet at the two ends. No matter under what form we step on the platform, no matter what objectives we habour and no matter how gigantic our energy is, we are just a grain of sand. We just have to do what we must do, whether or not we will enter history is not what we need to think about nor what we are capable of thinking about. All the history we can see is just the sifted gold. The ostentatious and flashy part has long dissolved with the passing times. Confucious said : we know that we can not achieve it anyway, we still make an effort in order to achieve it. What we are doing now are nothing more than doing our maximum , doing our best.