Beijing’s Palace Museum, a UNESCO World Heritage site, has vast holdings of paintings, ceramics, calligraphy and antiquities from the Chinese imperial collections, and displays just a small fraction of them at any given time.

The Hong Kong branch will rely on long-term loans from the original Palace Museum to display art covering 5,000 years of Chinese history.

The HKPM will serve as a focal point of the West Kowloon Cultural District, where it will complement M+, a museum of visual culture that is to be one of the largest in the world focusing on 20th- and 21st-century art, design, architecture and moving images. Designed by Herzog & de Meuron, M+ is expected to open in 2019.

Together, the two museums will display “a rich tapestry of Chinese and western art in both traditional and modern genres,” said Carrie Lam, Board Chairman of the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority (WKCDA).

The Hong Kong Palace Museum will be housed in a purpose-built space occupying a prime location on Hong Kong’s harborfront. Permanent galleries devoted to showing the Palace Museum collections will be joined by educational and ancillary facilities.

Carrying out the HKPM’s design will be Rocco Yim of Rocco Design Architects Limited, noted in the announcement for his understanding of museum, Chinese arts and the vision of the West Kowloon Cultural District.

The new museum is expected to open in 2022.