Bernard Chan wears many hats: president of Asia Financial Holdings, a board member of West Kowloon, chairman of Asia Insurance, and a member of the Hong Kong Council of Social Service. He oversaw the setting up and opening of the Hong Kong Palace Museum in July 2022.

The West Kowloon branch is the third Palace Museum in the world. As well as national treasures, it will showcase world artefacts; potential partners include museums in France, Italy and Liechtenstein. There are nine galleries, and pieces on display will include some of the 900 artefacts borrowed from the Palace Museum in Beijing. This is the first time since the Beijing Palace Museum was established in 1925 that it has loaned so many pieces outside of mainland China.

Chan admits he was intimidated by the job offer at first. But years of working in various art, cultural and even financial and political sectors have equipped him with the skills he needs for managing projects.

Leading the Palace Museum project requires more than just being an expert in Chinese art. It means leading a team to bring to life a vision of making ancient Chinese art and artefacts relevant to contemporary times and to people who may not be familiar with them. “Hong Kong has been designated as the cultural exchange between the East and West, and that’s what my team wants to achieve as well. The Hong Kong Palace Museum isn’t another museum branch but an independent museum that features both Chinese culture and other civilisations. And we’re going to tell the story of the artifacts with the use of technology,” he says.

Chan is also leading the Hong Kong Chronicles Institute, a digital archive project run by the think tank called Our Hong Kong Foundation, to publish detailed accounts of Hong Kong’s 7,000 years of history. The first volume in Chinese was published in 2020, while the digital English version launched in 2022.