Budiardjo “Budi” Tek, an influential collector who founded two private art museums in Asia and created an unprecedented partnership with two international institutions all the while helping to create space for contemporary Asian art on the global stage, died at 65 on March 18 in Hong Kong.
Tek was one of the most prodigious collectors of contemporary art in Asia, focusing particularly on Chinese and Asian art, though his collection also included major works from the West. His rise on the international collecting scene was swift. He began collecting in 2004, founded his Yuz Foundation in 2007, and, in 2014, opened the Yuz Museum in Shanghai. He appeared on ARTNews’s Top 200 Collectors list each year between 2012 and 2017.
The Yuz Museum went on to become hugely influential both within China and abroad. In 2018, Tek announced at a panel discussion in Hong Kong an unprecedented move: Yuz museum would form a partnership with Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Soon thereafter, the Qatar Museums in Doha agreed to develop programming with those two museums. Tek planned to eventually donate his holdings to the partnerships formed between the three institutions.
Budi was a true patron and a true friend to artists, ¨said Marc Glimcher, president and CEO of Pace Gallery. He helped establish Shanghai as a global art center by creating the Yuz Museum, a true 21st-century model, where an individual’s patronage and involvement benefited the entire city.¨
Budi Tek was born in 1957 in Jakarta, Indonesia to Chinese parents. He eventually headed up PT Siered Produce Tbk, a poultry company.