Salisbury Garden

The garden was named after neighboring Salisbury Road, although the garden itself appeared much later—above an underground shopping center and parking lot. An oval lawn here is encircled by a winding path, and broad steps descend toward the harbor. An open space between the lawn and the museum is set aside for temporary exhibitions and performances; it is free only until the next work arrives.

In the autumn of nineteen fourteen, architect Rocco Yim built a pavilion here from bamboo, steel, and plastic. The bamboo poles were tied using the same method used in Hong Kong to assemble scaffolding and temporary theaters. Nearby, designers Hung Lam and Eddie Yu, together with the Very Hong Kong collective, arranged C-Art Carts. Several carts could be joined into a stage, spread out across the square, or used as signs.

They were made to resemble hand-powered railway trolleys. Before the old Kowloon station was demolished, the tracks of the Kowloon-Canton Railway ran nearby; the Former Kowloon-Canton Railway Clock Tower, already familiar from the previous stop, remained from the station. The artists brought back to the former station area not an actual rail line, but its movable furniture: visitors themselves changed the arrangement of the carts, and the space adapted to an exhibition or performance.

This work was needed by the staff of the Hong Kong Museum of Art because of a very practical threat. The museum was being prepared for a long closure for renovation. Its director, Eve Tam, and the curator of contemporary art, Maria Mok, were responsible for the exhibition program and did not want to disappear from the promenade for several years along with the closed building. Shortly before that, in February nineteen fourteen, part of Salisbury Garden in front of the museum was cleared of a massive entrance arch, flower beds, and a covered walkway. The square was enlarged by more than twice its former size, and Art Square opened here—an outdoor exhibition hall without doors or tickets.

The bamboo pavilion and the carts made up the exhibition “Construction. Transition.” Its design corresponded to the museum's own situation: the building was due to close, but the artists had already received a place outdoors where the work could be touched, moved, and turned into a venue for the next event. In August nineteen fifteen, the museum did indeed close. The staff had already assigned Salisbury Garden a separate task—to show works by local artists here while the collections and exhibitions were dispersed among other institutions in the city.

Then the garden itself was rebuilt. The team of landscape architect James Corner removed its former enclosed character and created an oval lawn, a winding path, an event space, and broad steps on the harbor side. After it opened in December nineteen seventeen, temporary exhibitions and performances began here again. When the museum returned in November nineteen nineteen, its staff did not abandon the gallery moved outdoors: Kevin Siu, Bob Pang, and Shuyan Chan built three metal installations in the square, through which separate views of the water, buildings, and mountain skyline took shape.

The garden's name has nothing to do with this museum history. It came from Salisbury Road, laid out in eighteen ninety-seven. The road was named after the title of Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, third Marquess of Salisbury, the British prime minister and foreign secretary in the years when Britain obtained the New Territories on lease. The garden itself, bearing this name, appeared much later, in May nineteen ninety-seven, above an underground shopping complex and parking lot.

The bamboo pavilion, railway carts, and metal “mountains” are no longer here: all were created as temporary works. What remains is the space in front of the museum intended for their replacement. If nothing is on display there, it is a pause between exhibitions, not an unused part of the lawn.