EmErging EconomiEs and thE culturE boom

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London, Paris and New York might

be world leaders in museums and

cultural institutions, but a growing

number of cities in Asia, the Middle

East and Latin America are starting

to provide serious competition.

The three most-attended art

exhibitions of 2013 were not in

Europe or North America, but in

Taipei and Rio de Janeiro.

Last year Beijing’s National Museum

of China was the third most-visited

museum in the world, attracting

7.45m people, an increase of 38.7%

on 2012. Across Asia museum

attendance rose by 28% last

year, compared with a rise of 7%

globally, with particularly marked

increases at the Zhejiang Museum

in Hangzhou, China and the National

Palace Museum of Korea, where

EmErging EconomiEs and thE culturE boom

visits rose by 75% and 118.8%,

respectively, between 2012

and 2013.

China has been erecting museums

and galleries at a prodigious

rate, opening more than 100 new

institutions annually, including

Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural

District and Beijing’s National

Art Museum of China. In Beijing,

planners are turning the 2008

Olympic Park into a cultural quarter

with an enormous new national

art museum. The 30,000-sq metre

institution – more than six times the

size of the current site - has been

designed by French architect Jean

Nouvel and will house 100,000

pieces of art from throughout

China’s history. Due for completion

in 2017, its management hopes to

attract 12m visitors a year, which

at current figures would make it

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the world’s busiest art museum,

overtaking the Louvre in Paris.

In the Middle East, the United Arab

Emirates is boosting its cultural

offerings following a landmark

deal with the Louvre to build

its first overseas site. An “Abu

Dhabi Guggenheim” is also on its

way, while Dubai is developing

a reputation as a contemporary

art hub thanks to a new urban

cultural district called Alserkal

Avenue. Nearby Qatar is acquiring

a private collection of modern

and contemporary pieces and

hosting the likes of Damien Hirst,

while Saudi Arabia is building the

King Abdulaziz Center for World

Culture, which is set to open in 2015

in collaboration with the United

Kingdom’s Natural History Museum

and the British Museum.

In Latin America too, despite an

economic slowdown, government

bodies and private institutions are

investing in new museums and art

galleries. In Brazil, the Museu de

Arte do Rio opened in 2013, and the

highly anticipated Museu do Amanhã

in Rio de Janeiro and the São Paulo

Museu da Imagem e do Som are

expected to open in 2015 and 2016

respectively. Mexico has won critical

acclaim for its new “contemporary

art shrine”, Museo Júmex , while

Colombia’s capital Bogotá now boasts

over 500 public and private cultural

venues, including Maloka, the largest

science and interactive technology

museum in South America.

What is driving such rapid building

of museums and art galleries in

these emerging economies? Are the

public investments justified when

large swathes of the population

remain poor and lack basic services?

Is top-down cultural promotion

desirable, and can it be sustained?

And what does this growing appetite

for culture mean for the West and its

institutions? These are among the

questions that attend the rise

of the culture industries in

emerging markets.

raising buildings, and raising quEstions

One driver of the boom is the

growth of the middle classes, which

is increasing domestic demand for

cultural activities previously out of

reach for many in these countries.

The trend is no different to that of

the West. Europe’s institutional art

collections of today were amassed in

part by 18th-century nouveau riche

buyers, says Paul Gladston, director

of the Centre for Contemporary

East-Asian Cultural Studies at the

University of Nottingham in the UK.

Art has always been about money

and the rise of it, according to Mr

Gladston, who cautions against

romantic notions to the contrary:

we readily embrace the narrative

of Vincent van Gogh as a struggling

artist, when in fact his brother was a

well-connected art dealer. “Modern

and contemporary art has always

been and continues to be very much

tied to money,” says Mr Gladston.

“But in the West we have tended

to deny that because we want to

enhance the critical credentials of

the art, which is its selling point.”

In the same way as they did in the

West, rising incomes in emerging

markets are driving art viewing

and collecting, and a “new cultural

infrastructure is being formed”,

says Georgina Adam, an art market

commentator and author of Big

Bucks: The Explosion of the Art

Market in the 21st Century. “Billions

of new consumers have been

released onto the market, and

there are increasing numbers of

people with disposable incomes,”

she says, noting that both art and

luxury goods are symbols of newly

acquired wealth in Asia. “Entering

the contemporary art market today

is a way of showing that you have

made money. Collecting art is

positional, a way of showing that

you’ve arrived.”

A second catalyst of the culture

boom is the ambition of cities to

enhance their global profile. Culture

is critical to a city’s identity and its

appeal as a destination to live, work

or travel in, and governments like

to flex their cultural muscle through

their capital cities.

Lyal White, director of the Centre

for Dynamic Markets at the Gordon

Institute of Business Science (GIBS)

at the University of Pretoria, South

Africa, also identifies a “cultural

catch-up” at play. “Emerging powers

do still see the West as being

progressive, and there is an element

of wanting to catch up with the

West,” he says. “Certainly in Asia

there is a strong idea of what places

like Paris and Rome are, and you

see Asian countries wanting to try

to replicate that – and in many cases

doing it bigger and better - to earn

global standing and recognition by

the West.”

Dubai is also looking to museums

and the arts to assert its own

cultural credentials. “Dubai has

evolved to become a cosmopolitan

city in a very short period of time,”

said Abdelmonem Bin Eisa Alserkal,

a real estate tycoon and Emirati

patron of the Alserkal art district.

“It is not about being compared to

other art capitals. We have become

a hub for the region, and this is a

unique achievement”.

While promoting culture might be

partly about catching up with the

West or a country asserting its own

credentials, there are synergies to

be had with established Western

institutions. China, Brazil and Abu

Dhabi have all sought deals with

Western cultural brands. The

Louvre and the Guggenheim, under

construction on Saadiyat Island in

Abu Dhabi, will be part of a wider

a cultural quarter, parts of which

are due to open in 2015. While the

Guggenheim has been a pioneer of

overseas ventures, ranging from its

acclaimed Bilbao branch to its less

successful Las Vegas experiment,

this is the first time that the Louvre

has allowed the use of its name

and brand.

Such collaborations are not

without their critics. Some French

commentators have accused

the museum of selling out. Jean

d’Haussonville, formerly head of

Agence France Museums, which

manages the development of the

Louvre in Abu Dhabi, describes such

criticisms as ““shameful, close to

xenophobia”, adding: “The money

will restore France’s capacity

to acquire pieces on the

international market.”

Established institutions in Europe

and North America have long forged

links with museums overseas. These

partnerships used to be more about

Western museums enhancing their

collections, but now that model has

been inverted. “From a cultural

industrial point of view, it’s a

marriage made in heaven,” says

Mr Gladston of the deals between

emerging-market institutions and

the West. “You have countries with

a lot of surplus value and capital

which are hungry for culture, and

the West, which has that culture

as well as the brand: the in-depth

expertise, the reputations and the

collections of works.”

China’s cultural push has raised a

different kind of controversy – a

view that motivations are not so

much about art as about politics.

As Ms Adam puts it: “China has

made it clear that promoting culture

is about soft power, [presenting

to the world] a better face. There

is quite a lot of negative coverage

of China, and they wanted to give

a positive spin on what they are

doing, to make people forget about

clampdowns on individual groups.”

Mr Gladston agrees that there has

been a strong centralised policy

push from the government to

promote culture. “I think we are

looking at something similar to the

Great Leap Forward and the five-

year plans of the Maoist period,” he

explains. “You have the government

saying: ‘We don’t have enough

museums and are not competitive

china’s lEap

enough with the West, we have to

catch up, especially with America,

so let’s build these museums and

create a cultural infrastructure.’”

He says this process is not

dissimilar to what happened in

the West after the second world

war. “I question just how organic

the West’s development of

contemporary art and culture was…

After the second world war many

developed countries, including

Britain and America, deliberately

pursued programmes of cultural

promotion and soft power in relation

to contemporary art and the

proliferation of museums.”

All of the economies described

so far, except those of the Gulf,

have poverty challenges that raise

questions about the wisdom of

spending state funds on cultural

initiatives. Most obvious is the

opportunity cost: money spent on

cultural institutions is money not

spent on sanitation or healthcare.

Indeed, tough economic conditions

in South Africa since 2011 have led

to cultural projects fading from the

political agenda. Some governments

are experimenting with offering

corporate tax breaks to encourage

the investment of private funds;

while this approach is less obvious

than spending, it nonetheless

represents a loss of tax revenue to

the state. Brazil, for example, allows

corporations to direct 4% of owed

tax income to cultural projects.

According to Gegê Leme Joseph, a

Brazilian architect and museologist,

it is clear that Brazil is maximising

its time in the spotlight between

hosting the World Cup in 2014 and

the Olympics in 2016, deliberately

trying to “punch above its weight”

and letting people know that the

country is about “more than football

and Samba”.

But recent demonstrations during

Brazil’s World Cup, which criticised

the government’s spending

priorities, show that for all the high

attendance figures there is still a

feeling that money could be better

spent elsewhere.

Some experts believe that public

funding for culture, even in

emerging economies, is justified

on economic grounds. Caroline

Watson, vice-chair of the World

Economic Forum’s Global Agenda

Council on the Arts in Society, says

there is compelling evidence of the

contribution of culture to

the economy.

an Economic rationalE?

“Economists have not always

understood the relevance of

culture, but I think they are starting

to realise there is an economic

argument for promoting the arts,”

she says. Ms Watson, founder of Hua

Dan, a theatre company and one

of China’s first social enterprises,

adds: “As emerging markets do well

at meeting the basic needs of their

people, to get to the next level of

development they will need to look

more profoundly at their education

systems, and how they empower

human potential. The arts have

much to offer and provide a basis

for the emergence of new forms of

creativity that can fuel a country’s

identity and economic growth.”

The UN Educational, Scientific and

Cultural Organisation (UNESCO)

is eager to highlight the economic

value of creative industries,

including everything from art, crafts,

music, dance and film to toy design,

computer games and heritage. In

its 2013 Creative Economy Report

UNESCO says that between 2002

and 2011 the creative industries in

developing countries grew annually

by 12%, and that by 2011 world trade

in creative goods and services was

worth US$624bn. Danielle Cliche,

senior UNESCO official, says the

creative sector represented between

2% and 5% of most developing

countries’ GDP over this period and

should be taken seriously as a driver

for economic development.

The Gulf’s investment in arts,

culture and museums, meanwhile,

is a way of diversifying resource-

reliant economies and creating

new attractions for tourists. It is

also a way to attract professional

expatriates, who are needed to bring

innovation and expertise to newly

built cities.

While stressing the economic

returns on cultural investment, Ms

Cliche also argues that culture offers

populations a political voice – an

important part of the development

process. “The creative economy

has non-monetary benefits, such as

individual and cultural expression,

which empowers people and

provides them with a platform for

social and political agency and gives

them a voice,” she says.

xSouth Africa, where Ms Joseph

has worked on several major

heritage projects, including the

Nelson Mandela Museum, has

used museums to inform national

dialogues in the post-apartheid

era. “A lot of money was put into

cultural institutions to retell stories

that hadn’t been told,” she says.

“Museums were important in

helping to retell South Africa’s story

and reshape its identity.”

Constitution Hill, for example, is

a museum built on the site of an

old fort and jail where political

prisoners, including Nelson

Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Oliver

Tambo, were held. The museum is

also the site of the country’s new

Constitutional Court, built with

bricks from the old prison.

Arts can help urban regeneration,

and citing the example of Medellín

in Columbia, where investment in

culture has reduced high crime

rates, Ms Cliche says: “There is a

strong argument that placing culture

at the heart of urban planning and

development contributes to social

wellbeing, giving new capacities and

imperatives to create and innovate.”

South Africa’s Johannesburg, also

known for its high crime rates,

has used cultural investments

to revitalise districts such as

Braamfontein, where theatres,

galleries, museums and concert

spaces have now become attractions

for middle-class audiences

previously preferring to stay in the

suburbs. The Maboneng Precinct

project, meanwhile, has transformed

a former industrial wasteland on

the eastern edge of the city centre

into a vibrant urban community

with artist studios, restaurants and

entertainment venues, as well as loft

apartments, offices, a hotel and a

museum.

A final question regarding the

emerging markets culture boom

concerns sustainability: will

people continue to attend new

exhibitions or will the novelty wear

off, leaving a stock of underused

institutions? Several of China’s

new contemporary art galleries are

struggling to attract both content

and visitors, with crowds moving on

to the next new place as quickly as

they arrived. High-profile shows in

Qatar have attracted disappointing

numbers, raising questions about

whether the country – with its small

population – has a sufficiently large

audience to make big museums

sustainable.

“Powerful marketing tools can

attract visitors for a while, but

considerations of sustainability do

not always get taken on board,”

says Ms Joseph. “There are some

amazing big structures in Brazil that

attract many people to start with,

but their long-term vision is poor,

so their initial ‘bangs’ are huge, but

then they find it harder to know how

to make it interesting for the long

term and how they will be able to

attract audiences and continue to

generate income.” She adds that the

Brazilian tax break has been “a nice

mechanism … but the easy access to

money doesn’t force the planners of

cultural projects to conceive them

based on sustainable or entirely

viable plans.”

The key to long-term success will

be for institutions to forge a unique

cultural identity that will draw in

crowds, both domestic and foreign,

for the long term. Some institutions

have learned their lessons, Ms

Joseph says, citing the Museu do

Futebol in São Paulo, which realised

that it needed to do more than just

tell the story of football. Whether

in developed or emerging markets,

cultural institutions that their voice

and identity will stand the test of

time

sustaining culturE

Emerging economies and the culture boom was written by The Economist Intelligence Unit. It examines the

rise of museums, galleries and the arts across emerging markets, its drivers, its supporters and its critics.

The report is based on desk research and seven expert interviews.

The Economist Intelligence Unit would like to thank the following individuals (listed alphabetically) for sharing

their insights and expertise during the research for this paper:

Georgina Adam, art market editor-at-large, The Art Newspaper; art market columnist, Financial Times; and

author of Big Bucks: The Explosion of the Art Market in the 21st Century

Abdelmonem bin eisa Alserkal, Emirati patron of Dubai’s Alserkal arts district

Danielle Cliche, secretary of the 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of

Cultural Expressions and chief, Section on the Diversity of Cultural Expressions at UNESCO

Paul Gladston, associate professor of culture, film and media and director of the Centre for Contemporary

East-Asian Cultural Studies at the University of Nottingham; and editor of the Journal of Contemporary

Chinese Art

Gegê Leme Joseph, Brazilian architect and museologist who worked in South Africa between 2004 and

2013 on heritage strategies and products for flagship museums including Constitutional Hill, the Nelson

Mandela Museum and Kliptown Open Air Museum

Caroline Watson, vice-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Arts in Society

Lyal White, director of the Centre for Dynamic Markets, Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS),

University of Pretoria, South Africa

about this rEport