About “musaquarium”

In 2026, Lee Ka-sing began referring to the space at 50 Gladstone as musaquarium. Conceived as a hybrid environment—studio, library, home museum, and, above all, a site for conversation, idea-making, social gatherings, and remembrance—the term signals both function and disposition. “musaquarium” refers primarily to the east side of the unit, once an exhibition room during its years of operation as a gallery, which underwent a decisive transformation in 2018 when Ka-sing and Holly Lee decided to conclude gallery operations and convert the premises into their living quarters. The designation also extends to the larger west-side space of the unit with expansive corner windows, where small private exhibitions continue to be presented on a by-appointment basis.

The concept of musaquarium is informed in part by Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence, which Ka-sing and Holly visited in 2018, and by Pamuk’s proposition that “the future of museums is inside our own homes” (The Innocence of Objects). It is equally indebted to Marcel Duchamp’s Boîte-en-valise, whose portable and self-archival logic resonates with the project’s intimate, self-contained museological impulse.