Food for China's soul

The largest museum in China is under construction in Shanghai. The 20,000 sq m Zendai Museum of Modern Art is due to open in March 2010, a month before the Shanghai World Expo. Indeed visitors will have to pass through the museum’s extraordinary metallic “archisculpture” forest in order to get to the expo. Along with a multi-purpose performing arts hall, it is the centrepiece of the $300m Zendai Himalayas Centre, designed by the distinguished avant-garde Japanese architect Arata Isozaki for the 44-year-old entrepreneur Dai Zhikang. Dai is far from China’s wealthiest man – the 2007 China rich list of the Hurun Report, which tracks the wealth of Chinese... [read full story]