  fter a flurry of high-profile auctions last year, the Chinese contemporary art world is already asking a sobering question at the outset of 2007: When will the bubble burst?
Most observers remain quietly optimistic that the market is secure until the Olympics. but no one is quite sure what will happen after that. In an effort to avoid a market meltdown, many art insiders are discussing ways to both sustain domestic art production and encourage international programming in China – two essential steps they feel will benefit future generations of Chinese artists, collectors and the arts community.
“What’s happening right now,” says Colin Chinnery, the Ullens Center for the Arts Chief Curator and Deputy Director, “is that the Chinese contemporary art market is overheating and becoming so speculative and that can only be a bad thing for artistic practice because it means that there is a whole system being developed that does not encourage experimentation or risk-taking.”
Expected to open this autumn in Beijing’s Dashanzi Art District, the Ullens Center for the Arts will be the first completely not-for-profit art institution in China. Chinnery insists such a commercially-driven system “cannot possibly bring out the full creative potential for younger artists. That’s not a criticism of the commercial [art] sector as a whole,” he says, adding, “it’s just as true for any young commercial sector.’
Chinnery says The Center will keep all activities “above board,”  since there is as yet no non-profit sector in China. There is also no protective legal structure for non-profit organizations, as in the United States and Europe.
“At this point, there isn’t really a philanthropy network in China,” says Brian Wallace, founder of the Red Gate Gallery. “You might be able to set up in Hong Kong, but not here on the Mainland. China simply lacks the legal structure. But from our experience, if you want to do something not-for-profit, there’s always a way.” Wallace says the legal structures for non-profit organizations will eventually come to China. “They’ve already been established for the business community and trading community,” he says.
Red Gate is a commercial gallery, but it runs a residency program that operates at a loss. The program supports both international artists coming to China as well as domestic artists working outside of Beijing. Wallace says he hopes to diversify funds for the residency and develop into a foundation to support art in China.
Galleries like Red Gate are rare in a Chinese art scene that many here say put artists at risk, making them susceptible to the whims of the market. In addition to achieving commercial success, galleries like Red Gate contribute to the sustainability of the artistic community without always expecting a profit.
 The Long March Space in Dashanzi says its goal is to integrate contemporary art into the lives of the Chinese, and many Long March activities do not return a profit. This month, the space will open an exhibition that features a forum it held in Yan’an last year on the future of Chinese art education. With assistance from the Ford Foundation, Long March is also developing an art education program in a primary school in an impoverished region of Shaanxi province, west of Beijing.
China’s philanthropic institutions are horribly underdeveloped, so it’s been no easy road for the boys at Long March. “From 2002-2004, Long March was funded completely by its founder Lu Jie,” says David Tung, Executive Director at Long March Space. “We did not receive a single dollar from international funding or private sponsors.” Mr. Tung added: “When we first started out in an apartment out at Huajiadi, the painter Chen Wenbo let us use his couch and his air conditioner.”
Times are better now for Long March, but it is still difficult for a non-profit organization to operate in China without dipping into the commercial sector.
That may be why a non-profit art institutions are beginning to attract attention. “I think that what places such as Long March Space and Universal Studios-Beijing are doing is really good,” says Chinnery, “even if it’s not entirely feasible. They are people who want to do not-for-profit but there is plainly no system in place. The only way for them is to do some commercial gallery stuff that feeds into their not-for-profit aims.”
the Ullens Center for the Arts is going to boost the art community in China in ways that have nothing to do with its non-profit stance. The Center also plans to bring increased international programming to Beijing.
 International shows in Beijing and Shanghai are all too rare, and some fear that a lack of cosmopolitan verve could send the country’s art production on a downward spiral into insularity and provincialism. According to Chinnery, the Ullens Art Center plans to cooperate with major contemporary art institutions from around the world to “help inspire” local artists.
Bringing international art to China must be done carefully, however, especially in Beijing, which seems torn at times between its aspirations to become a world class city and its role as China’s political and cultural capital.
“Good art is good art,” Chinnery says. “Of course you do not bring art into the city that blatantly will not work here or blatantly will say something offensive to a Chinese audience.”
Chinnery envisions an ambitious three-tier exhibition program at the Ullens Art Centre that brings international art exhibitions to Beijing while also nurturing the domestic art production system that some believe is under threat. A large-scale exhibition series will feature “very focused curatorial visions,” including both Chinese contemporary art as well as an international group shows of young or mid-career artists.
A medium-scale series will show a program of contemporary art masters – such as Andy Warhol and other Post-WWII contemporaries. A third, smaller space will serve as a “platform for experimentation and that’s much more for local artists,” Chinnery says.
 This sense of clash and inspire is at the heart of the Ullens Art Centre non-profit dream, a wonderland that mixes both the grittiness and Wild West flavor of China’s local art landscape with the cosmopolitan finesse and scope of the international scene.
Ullens, however, is not the first to add a dash of the international to a Chinese art scene. That accolade arguably belongs to Galleria Continua. The Italian gallery opened an impressive space in Beijing in May 2005.
Although Galleria Continua is a top-notch commercial gallery, it hoped so simply establish a presence in China.
Monica Piccioni, one of the co-founders at offiCina, the consultancy that helped Galleria Continua establish a presence here, says it’s impractical at this point to work completely on a not-for-profit basis.
“To organize art events or act as a non-profit is still not an easy job in China,” Piccioni says. “This is why some non-profit spaces in China have turned into galleries. There is just no art funding practice in China. There are many potential donors but what we lack are the encounters between those who need funds for interesting projects and the donors who could make that possible.”
Making that possible, however, does not only rely on cash. “We believe that there is a strong potential for increasing art money donation and programs that do not necessarily involve giving money but providing opportunities – equipment, artist residencies, curators and young art managers,” she says.
 David Tung agrees: “Long March is a bit like a commune. artists who participate contribute what they can - it can be a work, a space, not necessarily money. It’s not I give you money; it’s more like, ‘this is what I can do.’ There are many ways to contribute.” However utopian that may sound, that attitude provides an essential balance to the recent onslaught of opportunists who, to use the words of bookseller Robert Bernell, “threaten to turn 798 into a curios market.”
The presence then of international art in China may unravel the “direct export” mentality that Long March founder Lu Jie and David Tung are working so hard against by taking art into the provinces. The Italians, meanwhile, especially through offiCina’s efforts, made an outstanding presence in 2006 with an Italian video-art retrospective at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing as well as the Guangzhou Museum of Art. But the Italians aren’t the only ones who’ve set up a strong base in China.
The South Koreans have also established strong exhibition programs, most notably with Kim Chang-il’s huge space in The Brewery, the up-and-coming arts district located near 798. Known as Arario Beijing, Kim’s space is a commercial gallery, but his presence in Beijing is less an attempt to sell international art to Chinese buyers than to help secure the gallery’s aspirations to become Asia’s premier art hubbernaut . Indians, Koreans, Chinese, Americans and even the hottest ticket from Germany, the Leipzig painters, all fit in at Arario Beijing.
PKM gallery, yet another Korean space in Beijing, just opened with a show featuring 17 young New York artists. The show’s curator was Don Cameron. “New York, Interrupted” obliquely deals with 9/11. “It would have been much, much easier to exhibit some well-selling contemporary Chinese artists,” says PKM gallery president, Kyung-mee Park. “But I wanted to start with something more related to my long-term vision.”
 Many gallery directors say that long-term vision is far more essential than making an immediate profit when setting up a local gallery or art institution. “Always think in the long-term,” Wallace says, “which means you have to be able to stick it out financially for a number of years.”
Chinnery insists the Ullens Art Center does have enough funds to stick it out for the long term and that the Ullens Foundation plans to make a long-term impact on art and, particularly, not-for-profit art here in China. “The funding,” says Chinnery, “currently comes from the Guy and Miriam Ullens Foundation, but we will gradually supplement that with other sources of income.”
One other provocative aspect of China’s not-for-profit art scene is rapidly taking shape on the World Wide Web. The British collector Charles Saatchi, who purchased a Zhang Xiaogang painting last October for $1.5 million, tells ArtZineChina that The Saatchi Gallery is about to make its presence felt in China, also on a level that is not immediately profitable.
Later this year, The Saatchi Gallery will launch its new website in Mandarin. A virtual gallery will be at the hands of China’s young artists, curators and collectors, in accordance with Saatchi’s belief that in the future more and more art will be bought and sold in cyberspace.
“We are very excited about having a presence in China,” says Charles Saatchi, “and we are currently working on duplicating our interactive online site for all Chinese artists and students to use. This will be in Mandarin and will include the same resources as our English-language site, such as the online chat facility and debate forum. Like our international site it will also have a section for museums and art colleges to profile their organisations online.”
 One important aspect of the on-line service is that artists and art students can also sell their work without the intervention of a middleman, that is, a gallery or a dealer. The Saatchi Gallery will also not be taking any commission on works that the Chinese artists sell on the Saatchi Gallery website. That may not sit well with many local galleries, but it will certainly increase global awareness of Chinese art, given the high volume of hits The Saatchi Gallery website receives: about three million per day.
While noting that he has been looking at Chinese art for the past couple of years, Mr Saatchi remains reserved in his enthusiasm. “We are looking at Chinese art in the same way that we look at all other art,” he says, “in that it makes little difference to us where the art is made; all that matters is whether the art itself is exciting.” He adds, “we find that much of [Chinese contemporary art] is world class, but that there is a huge gulf between the small amount that is world class and the majority which is derivative and kitsch.”
Saatchi’s opinion of what is kitsch and what is good may differ drastically from the many collectors who came to Chinese contemporary well before he did. But one thing is certain: Chinese artists, art students and rest of the art world here are about to enter a very intense phase of internationalism that will depend heavily on the efforts of non-profit institutions and activities. The direct export mentality may be on its last leg.
“What is desperately needed here is really high quality international art exhibitions,” Chinnery says in a small café in the Dashanzi Art District. “And of course you bring artists to do projects here or bring a really good existing exhibition along here – not because it is international – but just because it’s a good exhibition. That works exactly the same way it does in London or Paris or Tokyo or New York or Zimbabwe.”
image 1 Arario Beijing
image 2 the Ullens Center for the Arts
image 3 Red Gate Gallery
image 4 Long March Space
image 5 Galleria Continua
image 6 Beijing’s Dashanzi Art District
image 7 Guang Dong Art Museum
image 8 Saatchi Gallery
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