The opening gala of the Shanghai Biennale in late 2004 went off seamlessly--except for the arrest of a performance artist. Hong Kong artist Ke Weizhen, not a participant in the official show, clomped into the Shanghai Art Museum with iron rice bowls--the kind still used in Chinese school and work-unit cafeterias--tied to the soles of his shoes and his face painted white and red.

     The assembled crowd of international curators and Chinese officials looked on curiously as Mr. Ke clambered up the museum’s staircase, occasionally blowing on a whistle around his neck. Curiosity turned to alarm as museum security guards began to close in on Mr. Ke, who at first held them at bay with staccato blasts on his whistle. Then, four or five guards pushed him to the ground and then hustled him into a back room.

     Putting the question of Mr. Ke’s of artistic merit aside, this anecdote symbolizes the many tensions and contradictions faced by the Shanghai Art Museum as it strove to create a government-sponsored biennale that was at once new and provocative, while still adhering to a proscribed formula of “established” art.

     The Shanghai Art Museum, which organizes the Biennale, has done a lot to promote contemporary Chinese art. But it suffers under the misconceived notion shared by Shanghai’s government and people that the word “international” doesn’t necessarily mean global, but rather simply expensive or name-brand. So in pursuit of the endless goal of “internationalizing” the city, gallery shows as well as the Biennale have shifted from nurturing promising young local artists to primarily featuring big-ticket, internationally famous Chinese artists--or foreign works whose main selling point may be the fact that they are, well, foreign. Shanghai’s young underground artists of a few years ago have rocketed into the international spotlight, but the infrastructure that provided their launch pad has since diminished.

     The Shanghai Biennale was launched in 1994, and made a huge splash with its third incarnation in 2000, entitled “Shanghai Spirit”. Featuring foreign artists for the first time, it attracted international critics and curators, many in Shanghai for the first time, and generated significant buzz. The rave reviews focused as much on the spate of edgy, ambitious independent shows coinciding with the Biennale--of mostly then unknown Shanghainese artists--at private galleries, as on the official exhibition itself. The 2002 Biennale, “Urban Creation,” consolidated the Shanghai Biennale’s position as a major international art event, although many found it uninspiring, and again the less well-known “underground” exhibitions stole the show.

     “2004 was the biggest scale yet,” enthused one of the exhibitions four curators, Zhang Qing, who also curated the 2000 Biennale. The topic, “Techniques of the Visible,” explored but was not limited to new media art, such as photography, video and installation art. The 2004 exhibition, which ran from 28 September to 28 November, attracted roughly 130,000 visitors, up from 80,000 in 2002 and 40,000 in 2000. He said that the exhibition cost $1.38 million this year, compared to $1.06 million in 2002 and $790,000 in 2000. The rising budget went towards an outdoor official satellite show, new equipment, a media center and a symposium. Corporate sponsorship played an increased role, providing 10% of the funds, while 60% came from the government and 30% from the museum.

     The exhibition itself was impressive if sometimes inconsistent, carried by a number of strong works and a line-up of big international names like Bill Viola, Cindy Sherman and Yoko Ono. However, some of the smaller names may have made the biggest impressions. Liu Wei’s “Landscape of City” photograph recreated a traditional Chinese ink landscape with naked human buttocks, and in their “Mt. Fuji” series, partners Rong Rong and Inri frolicked naked at the snowy mountain base.

     Much of the criticism directed at the Biennale stems from the organizing committee’s tendency to elaborately fete visitors from overseas, while excluding Chinese and China-based press, critics, artists and galleryists. “It’s just becoming more ‘international’, like the rest of the art scene,” says Biljana Ciric, a contributing critic for Chinese-language art publications Art China and Art Monthly and junior director at the Duolun Museum of Contemporary Art. “Their symposium included only one Chinese curator, which led to a lot of criticism in the Chinese press that the Shanghai Biennale is just this huge party for foreigners.”

     Furthermore, the forces behind the headline-stealing, controversial shows of young local artists during the last two Biennales opted this time for more conventional fair. The disappointing 2004 line-up parallels a larger trend in Shanghai’s private galleries. BizArt, which initially cultivated the current crop of successful Shanghainese artists, has mostly shifted to showing European artists and organizing cultural exchanges. Meanwhile, recently opened contemporary galleries focus mainly on pretty, saleable works or international name-brand Chinese artists.

     “An art scene always has a place for newcomers, but Shanghai doesn’t have that feeling,” lamented Lise Yuen, a Norwegian artist who has lived in Shanghai for two and a half years. “In most galleries, you see the same artists’ names over and over again…Maybe these galleries discovered them, and now they’re famous, so it has to do with the age of the galleries. But we don’t want to fight over those same names.”

     Ms. Yuen and her husband Simon will launch Shanghai’s newest space, the Creek Art Center, on Jan. 18. Located in an atmospheric five-floor warehouse along Suzhou Creek, the center will include a bar and restaurant, intended to subsidize the non-commercial, experimental art gallery. The Yuens hope to provide the venue that emerging young Shanghai artists currently lack, and have invited thirteen art academies to the opening.

     “Our first question, in conceiving this project, was, ‘Does China have many young artists?’ You see very few, but with so many schools, so many students, they must be there,” explains Mr. Yuen. “We can’t say yet how the young generation will be, but someone needs to give them a chance, and nurture their expansion.”

     When interviewed, Mr. Zhang disavowed any knowledge of the arrested performance artist at the Biennale, although a Beijing art publication quoted him as saying, “It is the same as throwing out a crasher at a dinner party.” While throwing out some of these crashers may indeed be justified, it’s worth questioning whether Shanghai’s artistic guest list is becoming unnecessarily restrictive.

     Ms. Movius is a Shanghai-based writer.