X Museum. Image courtesy X Museum and Weiqi Jin

Michael Xufu Huang is the co-founder of X Museum, a platform for cultivating talents and supporting young and mid-career artists within a global context.Here he  speaks to LUX Contributing Editor, Samantha Welsh, about making art more accessible in China and the impact it has on the next generation

Michael Xufu Huang. Image courtesy X Museum

LUX: Londoner, Beijinger, New Yorker, where is ‘home’?
Michael Xufu Huang: Home is Beijing now. I went to middle school in England (Dulwich College) and university in the States (University of Pennsylvania), I spent a few years in New York. I do see myself as a world citizen. The global experience has influenced my vision to bring international artists to China and take Chinese talents to the world.

LUX: How has your international experience influenced your approach to build-up a cultural institution in China?
Michael Xufu Huang: When I lived abroad, I saw how other international institutions’ approach organising their exhibition programmes and fundraising. Places like New Museum and Palais de Tokyo gave me a lot of inspiration. You didn’t see institutions that focused on under-represented artists in China before I launched X Museum.  For example, most Chinese museums rely on ticketing, which limits the options for exhibition programmes because museums often need to organize “blockbuster” exhibitions with well-known western names or Instagramable shows to generate enough income to cover their costs. A museum couldn’t provide the most forward-thinking platform to support artists if they needed to make money from the public as that would require following the public’s taste. My international experience has made me learn to step forward and introduce patrons’ networks and corporate sponsorships to X Museum. This allows the museum to explore more innovative programmes and give the lesser-known emerging artists a platform to shine.

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LUX: Why were you drawn to collecting art?
Michael Xufu Huang: I guess it’s partially because of my horoscope sign! My sun sign is in Pieces, I‘ve been drawn to beautiful objects since I was young. Going to museums like Tate when I was doing A-levels really opened my eyes and helped me to discover interesting art beyond the aesthetic level. This has taken me on a new journey where the meaning behind an art piece also appeals to me. I like to gather things I love together, that’s probably the reason why I love collecting.

The Endless Garment, exhibition view. Image courtesy X Museum

LUX: What is so compelling for you to curate emerging young Chinese artists?
Michael Xufu Huang: I want my peers to have more visibility on the international stage. In the international art world, Chinese emerging artists don’t really receive equal attention. I hope to give them more opportunities to be shown internationally.

LUX: Thinking of how fashion, music, art converge and lead discourse eg Punk, or artist-designer crossovers eg Schiaparelli, McQueen, Abloh, how are you finding crossover with other cultural fields helps young artists push their talent and their message?
Michael Xufu Huang: I think to crossover with other cultural fields can help artists attract a new audience. In China, art is still considered to be niche. I feel I have the responsibility to make art accessible to a mass audience, especially the young generation. One way of doing this is to integrate art with mass culture. X museum not only provides artists opportunities through exhibition programmes, but also links them with creatives from other cultural fields. We also discover artists from other disciplines with mass influence and offer them opportunities to show their talents through a special programme called “X Invites”.

Last summer, we invited the multi-hyphenate public figure, Sida Jiang, to present his first solo show as an artist at X Museum. Jiang is a very popular actor/TV producer/TV host and director in China. Here at X museum, he “transformed” his role as an artist and presented installation, video, performance, and multi-media works. These works explored the boundaries between personal identity and public domain. Through his popularity and recognition in the mass cultural fields, his show brought a group of new audiences to X museum and inspired people who didn’t know much about art to explore more in this field.

Issy Wood: Good Clean Fun, exhibition view. Image courtesy X Museum

LUX: How do your crossover partnerships with luxury lifestyle brands amplify conversations for your generation?
Michael Xufu Huang: Fashion and art, they are both expression of taste. Through making art crossover with luxury lifestyle brands, people can see how complementary tastes collide. In today’s world, contemporary art is part of lifestyle. Through lifestyle crossover, we engage a wider audience and inspire more people to collect art. For example, those young people who collect luxury hip sneakers have a huge potential to turn into art collectors.

LUX: How does the X Museum programme respond to how millennials engage with social media?
Michael Xufu Huang: If we have influencers come to the museum show, they take photos of the exhibition and post on their social media. That could organically bring more followers to our museum and give people access to art. For each exhibition, our PR team not only allocates budget to traditional press, but also budgets for influencers. We have different social media strategies to engage more people online and offline.

LUX: Are artists also digital disruptors?
Michael Xufu Huang: For instance, X Museum’s website developer is also an artist. Our website is a naked-eye 3D experience that not only supplements our exhibition but allows audiences to engage for longer with each artwork through its interactive feature. People love to absorb information in a gamification way.

LUX: Is globalisation going to change how the next generation supports the arts?
Michael Xufu Huang: In China, people are having more opportunities to see western art now. People have more opportunity to understand how the art world operates. Now younger artists can start working in a global context. Many talents studied abroad and come back to China to contribute to society. They build up global contacts rather than local contacts. They can create works to international standards.

Collection as Poem in the Age of Ephemerality, exhibition view. Image courtesy X Museum

LUX: What is the art philanthropy vision behind X Museum?
Michael Xufu Huang: We want to bring art to a broader public. We also have a social responsibility to support people who don’t usually get access to art. We have helped people who are in need, such as donating masks during the outbreak of covid and after lockdown offering people working in the medical services free access to our museum shows. Philanthropy is not only about donating money, but also nurturing artists and young collectors. It’s about inspiring them to do something innovative and beyond, and you could say it’s philanthropical when they achieve success.

LUX: In this connection, what is ‘Form the new Norm’?
Michael Xufu Huang: I think form the new norm is an attitude towards life. It is so easy to follow but I think if one really wants to be remembered, one should be brave to find ones own path and attributes that help to distinguish oneself from others. And I guess for us it really applies to our architecture, wall design, light design, website design and artists, and so on..

Read more: Patrick Sun on Promoting LGBTQ+ Art in Asia

LUX: What is the X Museum ecosystem and how is that expressed through an immersive experience?
Michael Xufu Huang: X museum always values the symbiotic relationship between art and technology. We launched X Virtual Museum to the public officially in 2020. This X Virtual Museum continuously renews and regenerates as our museum exhibition changes. It’s not like other online exhibitions which just show digital artworks. X Virtual Museum is not an online copy of the physical museum. Nor is it a simple documentation and archive of the exhibitions. Rather, it is an extension of the physical space and museum programmes. It is intended to accentuate the differences between the physical and the virtual and offers a game-like, treasure hunting experience. Many “components” found in the X Virtual Museum are extracted from the museum architecture and structure.

X Museum. Image courtesy X Museum and Weiqi Jin

LUX: How did you interact with your community during covid lockdown?
Michael Xufu Huang: I think firstly our website was designed to be a naked-eye 3D experience that really attracts users internationally to view our exhibitions online. And we organized mask donation to the hospitals in Wuhan. And after the lockdown we provided free entrance for medical workers and provided free covid-19 insurance.

LUX: And what are you particularly looking forward to presenting this year?
Michael Xufu Huang: I’m looking forward to all our upcoming exhibitions. But there are a few major collaboration projects coming up which I’m very excited about. They are different than regular exhibitions, as these yet to be announced collaborations really let us curate in a broader context and can highlight our creativity and innovation.

For example, we will launch the Polestar Art Car in late 2022. It’s a unique and continuous programme set to make exciting creations that will change the world’s engagement with and interpretation of art and design in automobiles. We will invite the most innovative artists to transform the car in 3D and not only 2D format.

Michael Xufu Huang is the co-founder of X Museum

James Chen, Chairman, Chen Yet Sen Family Foundation and ‘Vision for a Nation’

‘Moonshot Philanthropist’ James Chen speaks to LUX about the importance of risking capital for a mission that matters

James Chen is on a mission to tackle a major problem that most of humankind doesn’t even realise exists. There are more than two billion people worldwide who suffer from debilitatingly poor vision, with no recourse to help. And yet all it would take to transform their lives is a simple pair of prescription glasses. Poor vision is a life sentence that could easily be lifted, with just a little help. In what he refers to as ‘moonshot philanthropy’, Chen – softly spoken, thoughtful and himself a wearer of prescription glasses – set out to change the world.

During his eighteen-year philanthropic journey, Chen has pioneered developments in optical technology through his company Adlens and overseen its implementation in the developing world through his NGO, Vision For A Nation. In July this year, largely due to pressure from his campaign Clearly, the UN adopted a Vision for Everyone resolution, which was unanimously agreed upon by all 193 member states. By recognising vision as a basic human right, the resolution will kickstart a global effort to help 1.1 billion people with poor vision by 2030. Here, Chen speaks to LUX about his mission.

LUX: You were influenced by your father to become involved in philanthropy. Tell us about that.
James Chen: When my father retired from business, he devoted himself to philanthropy in his hometown. I think a lot of people at that time were very generous, [but] they [only] wrote cheques. The difference with my dad was that he actually went there himself, a few times a year: he made that seven-hour trip [to his hometown], got to know the people and their needs. He set up schools, hospitals, town halls, and everything in between. Later, when he got old and stepped back from it, [I used it as] impetus for setting up the family foundation. Personally it was very gratifying to work with the family, and to build on his legacy, in China. But I wanted do dig into something meaningful globally. I had no idea what it would be.

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LUX: So how did the problem of vision come onto your radar?
Jame Chen: I came across this Oxford professor [Dr. Rob Stevens] who invented adjustable-powered lenses, and it immediately clicked with me. I grew up in Nigeria, where our family business still is, and for most of my career I’ve also been in developing Asia. The thing that struck me was that very few people wore glasses there – either because they don’t need them, or they don’t have access to them. When I met this professor, I could see how I could help solve the problem.

Thanks to Chen’s campaign Clearly, the UN is aiming to help 1.1 billion people with poor vision by 2030. Image by Sarah Day

LUX: Adlens is the vehicle you created to tackle this. What was that journey like?
James Chen: I formed Adlens with [Dr. Stevens]. We wanted to develop the technology and apply it commercially in the developed world, and socially in the developing world. My team spent two years knocking on the door of the World Bank, which ultimately rejected us. The industry and professionals said that it couldn’t be solved, but their model of delivery of glasses is to high resource environments: that model falls over in the developing world. That’s why we set up Vision For A Nation, an NGO, to test our model in a low-resource environment. We picked Rwanda, and developed a protocol to train nurses in three days to do a good enough eye test, and to dispense glasses. In five years, we screened 2.5 million of the 12 million population in Rwanda and dispensed 300,000 pairs of glasses. We left at the end of 2017, [having] done the thing that the policymakers said couldn’t be done.

LUX:  How did you scale that model?
James Chen: Instead of replicating the program one country at a time, I knew that this was a global problem: we had to think differently. That’s where I applied my risk capital to start the Clearly Campaign. Our target was to get policymakers to understand what we called ‘the problem that the world forgot’. We said, ‘if you have uncorrected poor vision, how are you going to achieve your sustainable development goals?’. For someone who has poor vision, it’s probably going to affect their educational outcome, their productivity; even gender equality is affected by poor vision. That’s the crux of our campaign.

LUX:  This concept of philanthropy and vision, had anyone done that before you?
James Chen: No one [has] thought of it in terms of a bigger scale. That’s why I had a brick wall when I first started looking into this. People do these programs [where they] go to a village and take glasses, but that doesn’t, to me, solve the problem. Poor vision is always put into the health silo: in the priorities of what governments have to tackle in developing countries, there’s a whole list of things that are perceived as higher priority than blurry vision. But there are 2.2 billion people in the world who have poor vision, of which, for at least 1 billion people, all they need is a pair of glasses to correct it.

Read more: Gaggenau’s Jörg Neuner on embodying the traditional avant-garde

LUX: Why do you think it took a philanthropist with no prior knowledge of the sector, instead of scientists and governments, to solve the issue?
James Chen: A key problem in the world of aid is there is very little risk capital available. As a philanthropist, I am in the privileged position of being able to take risk with my capital. If it’s successful, it’s hugely impactful. If it fails, I can absorb that loss. It’s now my prime mission [to incentivise] the high net-worth community to do the same. I coined this phrase ‘Moonshot Philanthropy’, and I came up with a tagline: ‘privatise failure, socialise success’.

Chen delivering a speech at a Sightgeist event in London

LUX: What would you say to people to encourage them to do ‘Moonshot Philanthropy’?
James Chen: Recognise the superpower that we have as ultra-high net worth individuals: we can deploy our own capital, and we can take as much risk as we want. Most of the high net-worth community do not deploy that superpower.

LUX: Do you think there is enough dialogue between philanthropists?
James Chen: No. There’s still a lot of scope [for that]. There’s all this noise around impact, investing, and social enterprise, and lots of donors have become confused. Most people who call themselves philanthropists are really doing charity or patronage. With the ‘Moonshot Philanthropy’ idea I want to plant that seed so that there is a model for people to use. I think I’m in a unique position to reframe this, to help people to grasp it. That’s the good thing about philanthropy: it’s different from business. In business you’ve got a great idea and then you try to maximise the value. In philanthropy, if you think you have a great idea, share it, and let people run with it. That’s the best way to scale it.

LUX: What’s next?
James Chen: I’m very focused on proving the link between vision correction and its impact on things like productivity and education outcome. We need to provide the evidence base so that governments will invest. It’s not just helping me by doing all this; I’m bringing more awareness, and capital, and support to the whole sector.

Find out more: jameschen.vision