16/5 Straits Times (Sin)

HK museum gets wrapped

Hong Kong's Museum of Art has been turned into one of the territory's first-ever public art installations.

American artist Richard Prince has wrapped almost the entire building overlooking Victoria Harbour with enlarged replicas of pulp fiction novel covers. The installation, which takes its theme from Prince's After Dark series, trumpets the start of a new exhibition called Louis Vuitton: A Passion For Creation, which will be held in the museum from next Friday to Aug 9.

The exhibition pays tribute to the creative process and will feature a number of large-scale works - paintings, photographs and video installations - by European, American and Chinese artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Paul Chan, Stephen Sprouse and Prince himself.

It took approximately seven days and more than 20 people to put up the installation which will remain on display until the end of the exhibition.

Prince, 59, is known for his 'appropriation' art style - borrowing elements from something to create a new work - as well as collaborations with Marc Jacobs, creative director of French luxury lifestyle brand Louis Vuitton.

This is not the first time that buildings are wrapped in the name of art.

European artist Christo Javacheff and his wife Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon are also famed for wrapping buildings such as Paris' Pont-Neuf bridge in 1985 and Berlin's Reichstag in 1995.