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 individuals, places him 65th, with an estimated net worth of $1.3bn. But he has probably committed more funds to public arts projects, from fine art to film, dance and traditional opera, than any other person in the country. He also founded the more modest Zendai MoMA – Shanghai’s only entirely privately funded museum – which opened as part of the Zendai Group’s Thumb Plaza development in the new Pudong district of the city in 2002. Under the direction of Binghui Huangfu, it has mounted an impressive series of exhibitions, seminars and educational programmes.