A new contemporary art gallery and sculpture park will open in Beijing later this year, as part of a luxury development, 20 minutes from the city centre, near the arts village of Song Zhuang. The complex is being developed by the Beijing Dongrun Investment Group and will include three hotels, apartments, a golf course, horse riding facilities and swimming pools.

It will also include a contemporary art gallery, Moon River MoCA, under the direction of Victoria Lu, the former director of MoCA Shanghai which was funded by the jewellery magnate Samuel Kung.When complete, Moon River MoCA will have a 10,000 sq. metre space which, according to the gallery’s website, will host “international temporary exhibitions” and “solo shows of seminal artists”. There will also be a large outdoor sculpture park.

The museum will be close to an art hotel, with works for sale scattered throughout the building. The emphasis there will be on artists working in far-flung areas of the country.

“A team will go out, to collect the work, and we hope to become a window for artists in remote areas of China,” says Lu. The revenue generated from selling art will be fed back into the gallery. According to Lu, Moon River MoCA will employ 60 staff, with an additional 10 to 20 handling art sales for the hotel.

Moon River MoCA is one of a number of galleries funded by developers in China. Although it is not a commercial space per se and has been registered as a not-for-profit organisation, like many art spaces in the country it is affiliated to a commercial organisation. For instance, the Today Art Museum in Beijing, set up by the property mogul Zhang Baoquan, is an extension of the Today Art Gallery which deals in contemporary Chinese art. One of the shows it is hosting to coincide with the Olympics is of the Adidas corporate collection which will then be sold in Hong Kong.