HONG KONG — At the waterfront site destined for a vast new center for the arts here, the view across Victoria Harbor is one to marvel at — an urban jungle of high-rises that together make up the city’s famous skyline.

香港——在用来兴建大型本地新艺术中心的海滨，维多利亚湾另一侧的景色令人惊叹，那高楼林立的都市丛林构成了这座城市著名的天际线。

The vista from the other side of the harbor could not be more different. Mostly barren land. A small construction zone. Some temporary buildings. And a sign announcing in big orange capital letters: “West Kowloon Cultural District.”

海湾另一头的远景与此处迥异。大部分是荒凉的土地。这里是一小片建设区。有一些临时建筑。一块牌子上用橘红色的大写字母醒目地写着“西九文化区”。

This is where a “museum of visual culture” called M+ (for “museum plus”) is scheduled to be built as a key part of the new complex, a mammoth government-sponsored project budgeted at $2.8 billion. By the end of 2019, according to the current timeline, many of the area’s components, including the 650,000-square-foot museum, will be ready to open to the public.

名为M+（意为“博物馆及更多”）的“视觉文化博物馆”将在这里兴建，它是这片新建筑群的一个重要组成。这个建筑群是政府赞助的大型项目，预算达28亿美元。根据目前的规划，到2019年底，这里的很多项目都将对公众开放，其中也包括了这座65万平方英尺的艺术馆。

But as plans for M+ move forward, questions are mounting about whether the original vision — a wide-ranging art museum that would put Hong Kong on the global cultural map — can ever be fully realized.

但是，随着和M+相关的计划逐步推进，很多问题也开始浮现出来：M+最初的计划是打造一个内容广泛的艺术馆，令香港跻身全球文化图景之中，这个目的究竟是否能够完全达成呢？

In recent years, both M+ and the larger project have been troubled by delays and the departures of high-level staff members. More worrying now are concerns that M+ may not be able to maintain the curatorial independence and distance from politics necessary for a world-class museum to thrive. Many members of Hong Kong’s art community describe a growing feeling of “nervousness,” especially among Hong Kong government officials, about art and a fear of provoking Beijing.

近年来，M+与它所属的这个大型项目都饱受延期困扰，不少高层员工纷纷离去。如今，更让人担心的是，M+可能无法保持策展的独立性，以及与政治的距离，二者都是打造世界级艺术馆所必不可少的。香港艺术界的许多人士都表示对艺术的“焦虑”情绪，以及对刺激北京的忧虑与日俱增，特别是在香港政府官员之中。

In February, the first show of works from the museum’s already extensive collection of Chinese contemporary art will open at a Hong Kong exhibition space after previous runs in Umea, Sweden, and Manchester, England. It will include a large-scale installation by the Beijing government’s artistic bête noire, Ai Weiwei, as well as a series of photographs by Liu Heung Shing of the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. The show is being promoted as the first to recount the chronological development of Chinese contemporary art without rupture. But it will have a less challenging title than the one it bore abroad — “Right Is Wrong” — and a different catalog.

二月，艺术馆将在香港一处展览空间内举办第一次展览，展品是从博物馆目前丰富的中国当代艺术收藏中选出的展品，此前，这个展览先在瑞典于默奥与英国曼彻斯特举行。展品包括北京政府的眼中钉艾未未的大型装置艺术，以及刘香成关于1989年天安门广场民主示威的系列照片。展览宣传中说，它是第一个没有断层，按年代发展详细展示中国当代艺术的展览。但是这次展览将不会沿用海外展览富于挑战色彩的名字——“正确就是错误”(Right Is Wrong)，展品目录也将有所不同。

Unlike mainland China, Hong Kong has maintained Western-style protections for freedom of speech despite its return to Chinese rule in 1997. Still, worries about China’s growing influence on the territory have taken on greater urgency in the aftermath of the Umbrella Revolution last year, when thousands of protesters took to the streets to demand greater electoral freedom from the government in Beijing.

和中国大陆不同，香港虽然于1997年回归中国，但一直维持着对西方式言论自由的保护。但是，人们担心中国对这一地区的影响在增加，特别是去年的雨伞革命，更是加深了这一忧虑，当时成千上万的抗议者走上街头，向北京政府要求更大的选举自由。

“I have no concern that the building will not be delivered,” said Uli Sigg, a former Swiss diplomat who in 2012 donated a large part of his collection, widely regarded as one of the most important and comprehensive of contemporary Chinese art, to M+. (Selections from it make up the coming exhibition.)

“我不担心这座建筑不能交付，”前瑞士外交官乌利·希克(Uli Sigg)说，他的收藏被广泛认为是最重要、最全面的当代中国艺术收藏之一，2012年，他将其中的大部分捐献给了M+，部分精选将在即将到来的展览上展出。

But, he noted, “Then there is also the question of what the mood will be in Hong Kong in a few years.”

但是，他指出，“几年内香港的氛围也是问题。”

Plans for the building, designed by the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron, have been completed; the contractor has been chosen; and the museum’s core team is in place. The museum has also been building a collection. According to its own estimates, it has spent $62 million on acquisitions so far and received donated works valued at more than $175 million. But none of this has come easily.

这栋建筑由瑞士事务所赫尔佐格与德梅隆(Herzog & de Meuron)设计；方案已经完成，承包商亦已选好；艺术馆的核心团队已经就位。馆方已经获得了一批藏品。根据馆方自己的估计，迄今它已经花费6200万美元购买藏品，并获得价值超过1.75亿美元的捐赠物品。但这一切都得之不易。

“We have achieved everything we set out to do so far,” said Lars Nittve, 62, the executive director of M+ and previously the founding director of the Tate Modern and the Rooseum Center for Contemporary Art in Sweden. “But it’s probably taken four to five times more work to make it happen compared to my experience in the London and Scandinavian situations. Almost every day and night is spent arguing.”

“迄今，我们要做的事都已经完成了，”M+的执行馆长，62岁的李立伟(Lars Nittve)说，他也是泰特现代艺术馆与瑞典马尔默当代艺术中心的创始馆长。“但是和我在伦敦与北欧的经验相比，这里要花费四五倍的工作。几乎每日每夜都在争执中度过。”

Much of the reason for this wrangling with bureaucrats and government officials, Mr. Nittve and others said, is the lack of a developed museum culture in Hong Kong and, more generally, Asia. Only in recent years has mainland China had a sudden increase in contemporary art museums. Many, like the Himalayas Museum in Shanghai and the M Woods Museum in Beijing, were spearheaded by real estate developers and private collectors and are privately run.

李立伟和其他人说，许多同官僚及政府官员产生的争执都源自于香港，乃至亚洲缺乏发达的艺术馆文化。直至近年来，中国大陆才突然涌现出大批当代艺术馆。像上海的喜马拉雅美术馆和北京的M Woods美术馆等许多艺术馆都是由房地产开发商和私人收藏家牵头，私人经营的。

Although M+ is not directly under government control, the museum has scarcely been insulated from politics. Currently, it is financed wholly by public funds. Representatives from government departments have been appointed to the cultural district committee responsible for overseeing it, and its chairwoman is Carrie Lam, the Hong Kong chief secretary and the city’s second-ranking official.

尽管M+并不直接属于政府管辖，但亦很难与政治绝缘。目前，它的资金完全依靠公共资金。政府部门代表委派文化区委员会负责监督，该委员会主席是香港政务司司长、本地二号高官林郑月娥。

The involvement of the government, some say, has made the museum vulnerable to political pressures.

有些人说，政府的介入令艺术馆更易受到政治压力。

“The problem in Hong Kong is not censorship,” said Pi Li, the Sigg senior curator at M+. “The problem in Hong Kong is self-censorship. It’s self-censorship hidden in the procedures, so it’s difficult to distinguish.”

“香港的问题并不是审查，”M+的西克展自身策展人皮力说。“香港的问题是自我审查。它的自我审查隐藏在各种程序之中，很难分辨。”

Mr. Pi said that procedural delays cropped up over the summer during discussions about plans for the exhibition opening in February. It will be the first time that the Sigg collection will be shown in Hong Kong since Mr. Sigg donated or sold more than 1,500 works to the museum.

皮力说，（去年）夏天就2月展览方案进行讨论期间，这种同程序有关的拖延开始浮现。希克将超过1500件藏品捐赠或出售给M+，这次展览将是希克的藏品首次在香港亮相。

Because the exhibition had already been on a European tour, Mr. Pi said, bringing it to Hong Kong should have been a straightforward proposition. Instead, he said, museum committee members took issue with not only the “Right Is Wrong” title but also some of the show’s educational aspects, which they said were insufficiently tailored to Hong Kong viewers.

皮力说，这次展览已经在欧洲巡展过了，把它带来香港，本应是一个不复杂的事情。但是，他说，博物馆委员会成员们不仅就“正确就是错误”这个名字提出异议，而且也就展览的某些教育层面发表意见，说它们不适合香港观众。

“I think the officials here are still trying to half-guess how Beijing would feel when an exhibition is mounted, so they tend to be very, very cautious,” said Ada Wong, a community cultural advocate and a member of the museum committee.

“我觉得，推出某个展览时，官员们仍然在试图猜测北京的感受，所以他们会非常、非常谨慎，”社区文化宣传者与艺术馆委员会成员之一艾达·王（Ada Wong，音译）说。

All the works in the show were retained. But in Hong Kong, it will be called simply “M+ Sigg Collection: Four Decades of Chinese Contemporary Art.” Mr. Pi and other curators emphasized that if there were any censorship of content, in the Sigg collection show or in future exhibitions, they would quit.

展览中的所有作品都得以保留，但是在香港，它的名字将被称为“M+希克展：中国当代艺术40年”(M+ Sigg Collection: Four Decades of Chinese Contemporary Art)。皮力和其他策展人强调，如果希克展或未来的任何展览的内容遭受审查，他们就退出。

“We came to Hong Kong because here, unlike in mainland China, you have freedom of speech,” said Mr. Pi. “But it’s not like freedom of speech in the United States. You don’t have it all the time. Here you must continually test it, maintain it and protect it.”

“我们来到香港是因为，这里不像中国大陆，你拥有言论自由，”皮力说。“但是这里的言论自由和美国的又不一样，不是随时都有。在这里，你得一直测试它、维持它、保护它。”

Still, the most immediate challenge facing M+ is clear. In September, Mr. Nittve said he would be stepping down as executive director in January, when his contract will expire.

不过，目前M+面临的最迫切的挑战也很清晰。9月，李立伟说，自己的合同将于2016年1月到期，届时他将不再担任执行馆长。

Mr. Nittve has been with M+ since 2011. But after delays in the schedule for the museum’s completion, he said, he felt unable to commit to an additional four years.

李立伟是从2011年开始加入M+的。但是自从艺术馆竣工日期延迟后，他说，他觉得自己没有能力再完成一个四年任期了。

Though he will continue as an adviser for the project, the search for a successor is underway. Among the many attributes required, most of those involved seem to agree that one quality will be especially important: a willingness to deal with politics.

尽管他还将出任这一项目的顾问，目前他的继任者正在寻找当中。在所需的许多条件之中，最重要的一项似乎是认同一种非常重要的品质：愿意同政治打交道。

“Politics are real here,” Mr. Nittve said. “It has real consequences, and you have to take it very seriously.”

“在这里，政治是真实的，”李立伟说。“它会产生真实的后果，你得非常严肃地看待它。”

He added: “In Europe, it’s like this or like that. But actually, nothing fundamental really changes. Here they can.”

他补充说：“在欧洲，政治可能是这样也可能是那样。但事实上，最基础的东西不会改变。但在这里是会改变的。”